


Bridges of Storybrooke County

by fictorium



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Affairs, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, Inspired by a Movie, Iowa, Movie Reference, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 55,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the plot of the movie/novel 'The Bridges of Madison County'. Regina is a married and unsatisfied housewife living on an Iowa farm, Emma is a globetrotting photojournalist. Their fateful meeting begins a love affair neither of them is ready for. (And if you want to know whether Francesca gets out of the damn truck this time? You'll have to read the whole story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bridges of Storybrooke County](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325845) by [napfreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/napfreak/pseuds/napfreak). 



> A bunch of things: sorry this isn't complete yet but I'm working on it frantically. My job situation changed massively during Big Bang and my writing time all but evaporated, or at least writing for fun did.
> 
> A million thanks to Tiff, C. and my wife for being my eyes, ears and editors on this story. Without them, you do not want to see the mess, trust me.
> 
> Herein: Regina will be identified as a Latina woman, as she ought to be. Having visited Puerto Rico myself and researched as I do for every story, I can't guarantee I won't be a little off in some aspects. But it's better to try and fail than to whitewash, right?

“Mom! Mom!”

Henry comes thundering up the stairs then, almost drowning out his own yell. The stairs creak in protest, the summer humidity expanding the wood all over the house. Days begin and end with whispered complaints about doors left open, floors that warp and seem to dip under her feet. Robin says every year that it’s just the way things go in old houses, and Regina doesn’t sigh too loudly anymore, or tell him that the hacienda her family owned pre-dates this wooden lump by 200 years or more. 

“Enrique,” she greets him, arms full of clean and folded sheets. “You’re going to go right through the floor, stomping around like that.”

Henry wrinkles his nose at the use of his birth name, usually reserved for times when he’s in trouble. His father tries valiantly to make the ‘r’ roll correctly, but since Henry learned to talk for himself he’s been happier with the anglicized version of his name. Regina tells herself he isn’t pulling away, but when Roland came along, she let Robin choose the name of their second son.

“Have you seen my new boots?” Henry brushes past her as he sweeps his just about tidied bedroom. The window is just an inch or two ajar, the morning breeze rippling the pale blue curtains emblazoned with his beloved sailboats. How typical of her son, born and raised in landlocked Iowa, to crave a life on the ocean wave. “Only Pop said they aren’t on the porch, and we have to get going.”

“Tell him they are too on the porch. The front porch, because they’re nice and clean. Now go on. Is Roland ready?”

“Yes, Momma,” Roland answers, appearing at the door of his bedroom. “I’ve been ready since breakfast.” He still uses the name for her they used as little boys, even though his growth spurt has finally hit at the age of 15, and he’s already Regina’s height and stretching by the day.

“Go back to reading your comics, kid,” Henry grunts at him. “Nobody wants to hear what a little butt-kisser you are.”

“Henry!” Regina and Roland exclaim as one. “Be nicer to your little brother,” Regina continues, the admonishment half-hearted. For the first time in a year she’ll have the house to herself, and with all the love in the world, she wants her cariños to get on the road before she takes to pushing the truck down the hill herself. “Roland, you go tell Pop to let you sit in the truck. That might get him out of the door at last.”

“I found them!” Henry yells a minute later, after clattering down the stairs in pursuit of his footwear. “Thanks, Mom!”

She follows him downstairs, ushering Roland along in front of her, satisfied he’s watching the steps instead of his comic pages. This must be his twentieth re-read of last month’s prized Captain America issue. 

“Hey there,” Robin meets her at the foot of the stairs, mopping his brow with a red-spotted kerchief and smelling distinctly like the mud and chaff combination of the nearest field. “Just a last-minute check, I promise.” He’s already sweating through his pale gray shirt, patches appearing beneath his arms and on the planes of his shoulders as he turns to chase after Roland and ruffle his hair.

“You’re supposed to be on the road already,” Regina reminds him, gently. “They still get restless on long drives, and I don’t want you giving them beer at the fair to make up for that.”

“Hard cider,” Henry corrects. “Well, if any is in season yet.”

Robin winks at him, and Regina realizes by the end of the week she’ll be dealing with grumpy teenagers who want to sleep all day instead of doing their share of the chores. They seem to think the house keeps itself clean by magic, and never more so than when they’ve been worn out doing something they shouldn’t.

“Well, Roland is sticking to juice, or one beer, tops,” Regina counters, smoothing out the skirt of her simple, lemon yellow sundress. It’s not quite fancy enough to count as a going out sort of piece, but it’s the nicest of what she wears around the farm. There’s no ceremony to them leaving, but some little part of her wants her boys to go off with the image of her at something close to her best. It’s been a long time since she’s had much cause to dress up for real.

“Last one to the truck doesn’t get a turn to drive!” Robin announces, and the boys scatter through the front door at top speed, the screen left banging behind them. “Sure you’ll be okay here alone again?” He asks, slipping a lazy arm around Regina’s waist and pulling her close. “It never feels right, leaving you all alone here.”

“Henry has his goats to show off,” Regina reminds him, laying a palm flat over his heart, soothed by its strong and steady beat. “They don’t want Momma to come and spoil their guy time.”

“You sure?”

“You just want me to sit with them so you can go out drinking with the guys. Don’t let Roland drive too long. A learner’s permit is not a license, no matter what he says.”

Robin leans in to kiss her then, swift and decisive, like he has for fifteen years and a little more. Regina moves an inch or so, letting it fall on her cheek, but the gesture alone soothes a quiet worry that’s been less quiet as the years have gone by. 

Security, she thinks. The quiet confidence of a steady man who’ll bring in the harvest and test their boys on their homework with equal enthusiasm. He’s taught them how to sneak food from her kitchen while she’s cooking, and to fight well, and to shoot cans from the back fence with a BB gun that stays under lock and key with the shotguns for the farm. And if relations between them have become more routine, that’s just the result of aging bodies and harder days, their chances for romance thwarted by tending to children or livestock. 

“You’ll be okay with the horses?” Robin’s concern is genuine, but rote. They have these conversations every time he leaves for so much as half a day. “I can call by Daniel's on my way out of town, see if he’d lend a hand?”

“No.” Regina turns him down. She doesn’t elaborate that the talk of the soda shop a few years back was Daniel’s embarrassing little infatuation with her; he’d been too sweet about it to deserve Robin punching him out over some old-fashioned male notion of pride and ownership. Besides, a little secret here and there gives a wife power, gives her something entirely her own. If seeing Daniel blush at the sight of her puts a spring in Regina’s step, she isn’t quite ready to give that up. “I’ll be fine. Rocinante is all better. No more colic walks.”

“Well, I’ll call at least once a day,” Robin assures her, kissing her on the forehead this time. He pulls away at the sound of the truck’s horn, at least one of their sons growing impatient.

“Don’t miss me too much,” Regina calls after him. He waves, already checked out, and jogs off to wrangle the steering wheel back from Henry, who clearly won that little race. She crosses the front garden in easy strides as the engine chugs into life, noting the leaves dotted with holes on the front row of lettuce, frowning at the pests invading her personal food supply. 

“Goodbye darling,” Regina tells Roland first, kissing him on the temple before he can squirm away from her. “Keep an eye on these two for me, huh? You’re my sensible boy.”

“Okay,” Roland repeats, his easy grin back on his face. Regina leans through the truck window to grab Henry’s faded green t-shirt. He surrenders quickly, leaning in for his ritual goodbye kiss, even hugging Regina around the shoulders for a moment.

“Don’t get lonely, Momma,” he teases. “The neighbors will talk if you start conversations with the horses.”

“Well, it gives them a break from talking about how tall and skinny you are,” Regina teases right back. “Good luck with your goats, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ll be coming home with a whole bunch of rosettes.”

“Hope so,” Henry says, nudging his dad with his shoulder. “Let’s get this show on the road, old man. Momma’s sick of us already.”

“I didn’t get my kiss,” Robin says with a pout, and there’s something just a little grating in his voice, under its usual easy gruffness. “You’ll have to owe me one when we get home, Gina.”

Regina laughs off the nickname she’s learned to tolerate, and waves back the second that they start to wave at her in perfect unison. Robin doesn’t linger before yanking the truck into first and setting off. She waves until her arm hurts, until they round the bend towards Hopper’s farm and disappear out of sight.

Alone at last, she takes a deep and cleansing breath.

***

So maybe Emma is driving a little too fast as she rounds the bend on a dusty road where she hasn’t seen another car in about a half hour. 

But the pickup truck that she almost slams into comes out of nowhere, the guy honking a tired-sounding horn and throwing out a protective arm to shield his kids in one smooth movement. Just as suddenly they’re out of sight, a shrinking shape in the rearview mirror while Emma’s heart pounds in her chest. 

It’s the excuse she needs to pull over to the side of the road, coughing at the dust her own truck has kicked up as she hops out, grabbing the crinkled map to take with her. Spreading it out on the hood, she checks her inner compass against the lines on the map and is annoyed to see she’s driven past the turnoff that wasn’t visible anywhere on the road so far. Kicking the tire on the way round, she grabs a water bottle from the cooler in back. Her fingers linger over a cool bottle of beer for a moment, but she’ll save that for when the first bout of work is over.

And that means finding the damn turning.

She squints, even through her RayBans, and looks down the road in both directions. The only sign of life is a signpost to ‘Mifflin Farm’, currently hosting some kind of black bird who looks as out of place as Emma feels. She has to find someone local and ask her way around or it’s a wasted day rolling up and down dirt tracks like these. 

The quicker she gets the shots for a 7-page spread, the quicker she can get on the first plane back to Boston, all set for the next, hopefully much more exotic, assignment. She’d given Nolan ten different kinds of hell for packing her off to the Midwest instead of the Far East, but the stubborn man hadn’t budged an inch.

She chugs the rest of the water and tucks the empty bottle back into the cooler, ready for its eventual refill. Rubbing her palms on her jeans, just a hair too tight for a long day of driving, Emma finds her eyes drawn back to the sign for Mifflin Farm, and the only side road that's been visible so far.

Time to find that local, she realizes with a sigh. Emma hops back into her battered pick-up, the yellow paint peeling in as many places as it still rests, and guns the temperamental engine.

For the first time all day, the gnawing impatience deep in her gut fades away.

**

Regina has barely finished washing the few dishes left in the sink when she hears the crunch of wheels on gravel. Tutting at the inevitable forgetfulness, she dries her hands on the nearest dishtowel, noting the new holes in it with a frown. That’s another one past mending, another minor part in need of replacing.

"Well?" She calls out as she steps out of the kitchen door. The sight of an unfamiliar vehicle stops her in mid-stride. She hesitates, the glare of the morning sun bouncing off the windshield and obscuring the driver inside. It’s hard to recall the last time they had visitors.

To her surprise, when the truck door opens, a woman steps down. She’s dressed in tight blue jeans and a white tanktop, the kind of practical things Regina rarely wears unless she’s mucking out the stables. The boots are knee-high, not quite riding boots but similar in style, but the long curls that bounce with each step are mesmerizing at first. Regina touches her own hair, pinned up against the oncoming afternoon heat, and it’s hard not to feel a little self-conscious.

“I think I’m lost,” the stranger calls out, stopping just short of the porch and shoving her hands awkwardly into her pockets.

“Are you supposed to be in Iowa?” Regina asks.

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re not so lost,” Regina finishes, a grin appearing almost in spite of herself. “Where are you trying to find?”

“You local?” The woman asks, frowning a little, no doubt at the trace of Puerto Rican accent that’s never left Regina, not even after twenty years here in the Midwest. 

“More local than you,” Regina counters defiantly. “If you want to wait for someone born in a cornfield, guess you should try another farm.”

“Hey, wait!” The woman calls out, panicked by Regina turning back towards the screen door of the kitchen. “I didn’t mean to… I travel a lot, I’ve learned not to assume everyone who lives somewhere actually knows it all that well.”

“That’s what you’ve learned?” Regina turns back, marching down the porch steps to confront this woman who’s gotten under her skin in half a minute or less. Not even the boys achieve it that fast. “Well, why don’t you try me first? If I don’t know, I’ll tell you so.”

“Fine!” Holding her hands up, the woman takes her sunglasses off, folding them with steady hands and squinting into the sunlight. Whether intended to or not, it makes her much less standoffish, and she’s a lot younger than Regina first imagined from the frowning set of her mouth and the way she carries herself. “I’m looking for the Old Toll Bridge, you know it?”

“No,” Regina answers, shaking her head. As the other woman’s shoulders slump, Regina’s laughter spills out, drowning the sigh of frustration. “Of course I do! It’s only ten, fifteen minutes from here. In Iowa, that’s practically next door.”

“I’ve seen it on the map, but there’s no sign of the turning,” the woman explains. 

“Maps are for outsiders,” Regina says in turn. “You need to drive back down our road here, hang a left when you reach the end. Then you drive until you see a white farmhouse. They have an angry, spotty dog. That’s Hopper’s Farm.”

“Angry, spotty, dog,” the stranger repeats. “Is that important?”

“He runs around the front field all day. You go further than Hopper’s, you’ve gone too far. You’ll end up right back here.”

“Right.”

“But when you get to Hopper’s, and see the dog, there’s a sharp turn right by his barn. You take that, then a right, then the next left and you’ll come to a fork in the road.” Regina doesn’t know why she’s rattling these directions off so fast, other than to look like she knows everything there is to know about the roads of rural Iowa, but she can’t make herself slow down. 

“Uh…” The woman is startled. “So the fork… which side do I take?”

“It would be easier to tell you if they marked the roads around here,” Regina sighs. “But I guess they figured we don’t get too many visitors, and those of us who live here know it all even with our eyes closed.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Listen, I, ah…” Regina doesn’t recognize the impulse, but she blurts it out before she can talk herself down. “It would probably be quicker if I show you. I mean, if you wanted. I can show you or I can tell you, whatever works.”

“As long as I’m not taking you away from anything? And I’m Emma, by the way,” Emma adds, extending a hand after quickly wiping it on her jeans. “Figured we should know each other’s names, that way it’s not getting into a truck with a stranger.”

“Regina,” she replies, barely gripping Emma’s hand as they shake. “And no, I was going to bake an apple pie or, you know, discover the cure for cancer. But that can wait.” They smile at each other, and Regina feels like one of her nervous colts, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. “Just let me get my shoes, okay?”

"Sure," Emma replies, jogging back towards the truck. Regina lingers a moment to watch her start throwing newspapers and paper bags and empty bottles into the back. 

Still, an adventure is an adventure, even in a messy truck. Regina steps inside to grab her sandals, slipping them on and then wondering if she shouldn't pick out something a little nicer. Ignoring the impulse, she closes up and heads out to Emma's truck.

After all, there's the best part of the day still to waste.

***


	2. Chapter 2

***

Emma has almost excavated the whole front seat when Regina sneaks up behind her, the approach of flats on short grass all but silent.

“Hey,” Regina offers, awkward and yet still sort of stiff and regal. Usually Emma would run a mile from snotty housewives like this, but something is tugging at her. Something that says getting to know this farmer might just be some fun in a stretch of boring days.

“Hey,” Emma replies. “Sorry about the mess. Travel alone long enough, you forget to leave space for anyone else.”

“That’s a lot of junk food,” Regina remarks as she slides into the passenger seat. Emma bites her tongue as she jogs around the front of the truck, answering only when she’s gotten in and started the engine turning over.

“Don’t get a lot of opportunities for a home-cooked meal,” Emma points out. “Not that it matters, I guess, since I can’t really cook. You said down the track and right, right?”

“Right,” Regina says with a nod. “I didn’t mean… about the food. You have a lovely figure. It was nothing to do with that.”

“Didn’t think it was,” Emma says, even though her heart had sunk a little at the perceived insult. “Guess you don’t see a lot of burger joints in a place like this, huh?”

“Where do you think they raise the cows? Or grow the wheat for the burger buns?”

“I want to say… Nebraska?”

Regina snorts at the weak attempt, biting her lower lip and looking like she’s about to laugh out loud. 

“If you want a good burger in town, you go to Granny’s,” she offers a moment later. “In Storybrooke, I mean.”

“I’ll do that,” Emma promises. “I’m just glad you’re not running me out of town.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m not sure. Wouldn’t be the first time, though.”

“What brings you to Storybrooke, Miss…?”

“Swan,” Emma finishes. “And what about you, _Regina_? What is the Queen’s surname?”

“You speak Latin?” Regina queries. “They teach you that in… well, where are you from?”

“These days I’m from Boston. If you’d asked me three years ago, I probably would have said Phoenix. Portland before that.”

“But that’s not where you’re from. Where do you call home?”

“When my parents dumped me by the road, it was in Worcester, Massachusetts, so I guess that’s where I’m from,” Emma answers, sharing a lot more than she ever intended to. It makes her blush, and she hopes it just looks like she’s caught a little too much sun. “Is Storybrooke home for you?”

“It has been. For… well, for a lot of years. My children, they make it home for me. And it’s Mills, for the record. Regina Mills.”

“And where was home before you had these kids?”

“You see the spotty dog?” Regina points. “Follow the fence around. I’m from Puerto Rico, originally. My father’s family owned a small sugar cane plantation.”

“On the mainland? Or, like, Vieques? They had a lot of sugar there, right? Before the, uh…”

“Before the Navy bought us all out?” Regina finishes, and Emma risks only a glance, but she can tell the other woman is impressed. “Yeah, we moved to a town called Esperanza, but my father, he never quite accepted the change.”

“He died?”

“I used to tell people it was from a broken heart. And after a while, that just became the story. The fork is coming up now.”

“I take a left?” Emma confirms. Regina nods. “Esperanza, huh? That’s not far from Mosquito Bay.”

“You’re telling me you know Vieques?” Regina is incredulous, but she says the name of the island with a warmth and lazy precision that Emma’s own pronunciation lacked. On Regina’s tongue, the place sounds like a home.

“Not that you asked, before getting in my truck,” Emma teases. “But I’m a photographer. I’m looking for this Toll Bridge as part of a piece on that particular architectural style.” She slows the truck as the road gets rougher. “One of my assignments a few years ago was an article on the Spanish colonial history of San Juan. When I heard about Mosquito Bay--I know, Fajardo was a hell of a lot closer, but the guys I worked with they said if you want to see the glow right, you gotta go to Vieques. So I changed my flight and I took a couple of days to go kayaking out there.”

“You changed your flight?” Regina repeats back to her. “Just to see the glowing water?”

“It was worth it,” Emma tells her. “Is that so strange? You get to go somewhere for the first time, don’t you think you should see all it has to offer?”

“I don’t know. I suppose,” Regina is withdrawing into herself, Emma can see it. Something in what she’s said has hit the wrong chord entirely. “I’ve only ever been to Puerto Rico and right here in Iowa. Oh, we went to Chicago a few times. Before Enrique came along.”

“Enrique’s a good name,” Emma responds. “That’s, like, Spanish for Henry, right?”

“Right.”

“Weird. I always thought if I had a kid, I’d want him to have a good strong name like Henry.”

“You’re not married?”

“Nearly, once. But it wasn’t for me. Actually guys, in general? Turned out not really to be for me.”

“You’re saying--”

“Oh, wow. That’s the bridge?”

***

Regina is startled by how quickly the truck comes to a halt. They hadn’t even been going all that fast, she realizes now. Emma is already in motion, leaning across to smack the glove compartment with the side of her hand, which is apparently the trick for opening it. She pulls a camera lens out first, then a pack of Marlboros.

“Smoke?” She asks, and though she hasn’t since Henry was born, Regina nods and takes one from the battered packet. Emma pulls a silver lighter from the pocket of her jeans, her fingers wrapped around some kind of inscription. She lights Regina’s cigarette first--good manners--before lighting her own and rooting around in the back of the truck.

“Can I help?” Regina asks after a moment, stepping out into the sunshine and stifling a cough from the first taste of smoke in her throat.

“Oh no,” Emma insists. “Sorry, this won’t take long. I just need to check a couple of things, the real shoot will start tomorrow. Gotta love that morning light, you know?”

“Oh, of course,” Regina replies, as if she has the first clue what the difference is. It’s nice for once that someone assumes she can keep up, instead of talking down to her or directing anything resembling an interesting conversation straight to Robin every time. “You’re just taking pictures of the bridge and then on to the next job?”

“Well, there are a few like this here in the county.” Emma hoists a silver case and a tripod, stepping over the guardrail at the turn in the road. “I figure it’ll take me the best part of a week, to get enough variety and get enough background for the article.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a cooler in back, on your side. If you wanted to grab a drink, go right ahead. I really will be as quick as I can.”

“You want?”

“I’m good,” Emma answers, before stepping down the slope and out of sight.

Regina takes a long drag on the cigarette, feeling the smoke sink down the back of her throat, and in the fierce sunshine of the late morning, she could almost be back home. She closes her eyes, standing in the slight shade of the truck, and listens to the quiet hum of the countryside around her. 

It’s more peace than she’s allowed herself in weeks, maybe even months. Even when the kids are in school, Robin is always coming and going, or sending the farmhands in his stead, polite young men who call her doña and always take off their caps when approaching the house or the barn when she’s around. 

The past few harvests, the men have been Dominicans, not quite close enough to Vieques to consider them ‘neighbors’, but listening to the low burr of their accents as they lift and carry in the fields sometimes still manages to make Regina’s breath catch in her throat at the memories of her father. His rough hands taking her softer ones in his, the sticky sweet smell of sugar surrounding them some days, on others the acrid smoke of the fire, burning off the leaves to make harvesting the canes easier. He’d explained the cycle to her many times, staving off her nightmares at the land erupting in flames so often. To a child it had been horrifying. To Regina, now, it’s what she thinks of every time she lights the stove or stokes the fire in the winter.

Shaking off the memory, Regina pulls the lid from the cooler and surveys the contents. Some Coca-Colas, some beers that look tempting as they sweat in their brown bottles. Amusingly, there are also a pile of film cannisters tucked in there amongst the ice blocks, but she doesn’t dare to touch. Instead she takes a last puff of the Marlboro, before stubbing it out on the rough surface of the road. She kicks it out of sight and helps herself to a cola, twisting the top off and only realizing her thirst as the first gulp of bubbles fizz across her tongue. 

Another few sips and there’s still no sign of Emma and her equipment. Regina walks slowly towards the bridge itself, the looming wooden cover blocking out the sun and creating a cool path to walk on. 

The panels of the enclosed bridge are cool to the touch, but rough under her palm. As her eyes adjust to the lack of sunlight, Regina can make out a generation or more of etched initials and crudely-drawn hearts. If she remembers correctly, one of the other bridges in this style, two towns over where the drive-in used to be, bears her initials under Robin’s. Already married, but before Henry had come along, tipsy on cold beer he’d pulled a penknife from his pocket and carved them both into the wood. She almost never drives that road anymore. She can’t quite remember when she stopped.

She’s lost in thought, doesn’t register the footsteps until Emma is right behind her. The height difference isn’t that significant, but when Regina turns she feels distinctly loomed over. She takes a step back, making contact with the wooden wall, before noticing the clutch of flowers in Emma’s hand.

“I wanted to, uh, say thanks,” Emma nods to the improvised bouquet. “That’s still something people do, right? Give flowers to a woman in thanks?”

“Well,” Regina considers a moment, staring at the wildflowers and trying her best to look thoughtful. “I suppose. Except those ones? I hope you didn’t sniff them first, because their pollen is poisonous.”

Emma drops the flowers in horror, wiping frantically at her nose with the other hand. 

“Shit! Shit. Shit!”

Regina loses her composure then, cracking into what feels like the first real smile in too long. It’s not a quick quirk of her cheek muscles this time, but the kind of grin that feels like it could split her face. 

“You… you were kidding?” Emma sputters. “Wow, you’re kind of a sadist.”

“Oh, I’m a regular witch,” Regina insists, holding back an honest-to-God cackle. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Evil,” Emma mutters, but she’s smiling all the same. “At least you took a Coke. I’ve repaid your help a little bit.”

“Will you be able to get your shots?”

“Sure, first thing tomorrow. I’ll just pack up again, drop you at home.”

“I can walk,” Regina tells her, scuffing one sandal against the wooden slats of the bridge. “It’s not so far, you see that now.”

“No way.” Emma shakes her head, jogging to the far side of the bridge and retrieving her equipment, then jogging right back. “I interrupted your day, so a ride home is the least I can do.”

“Can I help you carry--”

“All set,” Emma explains, leading the way back to the truck. “I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this stuff on my own. Now, let’s see if I can find my way back without help.”

***


	3. Chapter 3

The flowers were a goddamned rookie mistake, Emma curses herself mentally, only the gear in her hands preventing her from lashing out at the side of the truck. This trip isn’t about trying her luck on the sheltered housewives of Iowa. Not when she learned a long time ago that anything outside the relatively safe spaces of Boston lead to anything from a slap to getting locked in a police cell overnight. 

There’s a country mile between the curiosity of a bored and lonely woman who wants to hear stories of a photographer’s life, and the kind of curiosity that gets Emma laid every now and then. It’s just something about the way Regina’s eyes widen and darken, the curve of her hips beneath that simple cotton dress… well, it’s enough to make a girl’s mouth water, and Emma is fortunate that she learned a long time ago to do her lusting in secret.

The roads are easy now she recognizes them, it takes a matter of minutes to complete the journey in reverse. The truck rolls to a stop beside the mailbox, leaning slightly from being in the ground so long, carefully painted with MILLS in flaking black paint.

“Heat’s getting up,” Regina sighs, her hand resting on the door handle, but her eyes still closed as the truck’s stuttering draft from the air-cooling system blows over them both. Emma nods in acknowledgment, the cotton of her tanktop already sticking to her back from the limited exertion at the bridge. It’s going to be a long week out in these fields, only the waving corn as a shield from the baking sun. Not that it’s really any worse than shooting the dramatic scope Death Valley, or the architecture of Timbuktu, but Emma’s a northeastern girl at heart, and she waits gleefully every year for the first crunch underfoot of fall, for the first nip in the air that lets her see her breath when she exhales.

All that is a million miles from Iowa in July.

“You want to come in for some iced tea?” Regina is asking, and Emma must have drifted off for a moment, because there’s a snap in the question that suggests this isn’t the first time of asking. “Or are you busy?”

“Nah, I’m pretty much free until the morning,” Emma answers, with an apologetic smile. “I’d give my arm for some iced tea, in fact. Unless I’m keeping you from something?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I had anything to do but tend to the horses and sit around the house.”

“You don’t seem like the sitting around kind to me.”

“How well can you know a person from just… what, 30 minutes?” Regina demands, as they each get out of the truck, Emma jumping down and Regina making a more graceful descent. 

“You’d be surprised. I knew a lot about you from three, never mind 30,” Emma points out. “You meet as many people as I do, you learn to cut to the heart of the matter. It’s sort of like a superpower.”

“You mean, like X-Ray vision?” Regina doesn’t look too impressed, pausing on the porch with her arms folded over her chest. “You sound like one of my sons. Always with their heads in a comic book.”

“Well, now I know where all the good reading material is in town. If they’ll let me borrow one, that is. Do they have summer camp in these parts?”

“I wouldn’t know. Mostly, it’s helping on the farm, whenever school is out. But this week they’ve gone to the State Fair. Enrique is showing his goats. His last year before college, so it’s a big deal for them.”

“You didn’t want to go?”

“It’s my vacation. Five days per year, all to myself. Just me, the horses and all the opera I want to listen to. Instead of tuning the radio to pop songs all day, every day, like my sons do.”

“That sounds pretty nice to me.” Emma hesitates by the screen door. “Should I take my shoes off?”

“It’s fine,” Regina tuts, ushering Emma inside. “Sit, sit. You take lemon?”

“This is a beautiful home,” Emma blurts as she takes a place at the kitchen table. There’s a few touches of age fraying the edges, but the space is immaculate and clearly cared for. There’s an honesty, a lived in character to the creamy-colored furniture and the spotless gingham cloth that Emma wants to breathe in and hold for a moment; it’s the kind of home she’s never had. “You must be very proud,” she adds, as Regina sets a tall glass in front of her, ice rattling gently with the impact.

Regina says nothing, but the look she shoots Emma over her own glass of iced tea is appraising. Perhaps her bullshit meter is just as finely honed as Emma’s own. 

“So, your husband and your… was it three, kids are all off to the fair?”

“Just two. Sons,” Regina clarifies. “And they’re not really kids so much these days.”

“Oh?”

“Roland just turned 15, and his big brother I told you about, well, 18 is just around the corner for him. It seems like last week they were helpless little bundles in a blanket.” 

“It must be nice having children,” Emma offers politely. “I’ve heard lots of people say it’s nice to be needed so much.”

“Needed?” Regina scoffs, smirking into her glass. “Momma, iron my shirts. Momma, fry me some steak. Oh, they need me alright. When it suits them. I notice so many changes...”

“Everything changes,” Emma asserts, stumbling on the half-baked thoughts scribbled in her notebook over the past few days. Article ideas, or something like that, about time and change and the inconstancy of life. Nothing she ever intends to show to anyone, but with a seemingly captive audience, she can’t resist pouring forth just a little. “I mean, the one thing that is always true, that always stays the same, is that nothing stays the same. You see what I mean? I find that kind of comforting, don’t you?”

“I’m not really an expert on change,” Regina deflects, frowning just a little. In the privacy of her thoughts, Emma finds it curiously adorable, another string to this bow of attraction that she needs to beat herself over the head with.

“The sugar fields and beaches of Vieques to Iowa is a pretty big change, I’d say,” Emma contradicts her, and sure enough it lights a fire in Regina’s eyes. “I think you should give yourself more credit.”

“It wasn’t really my decision, in a way.”

“Really?” Emma seizes on the note of a secret not often told, holding her breath in case she disrupts the moment. The kitchen is cool, shielded from the sun and as pleasant a place as she could hope to find herself right now. As long as Regina is her hostess, Emma’s in no hurry to leave. “I had the sense not many people boss you around.”

“Oh right,” Regina snorts again. “I’m queen of all I survey, can’t you tell?” Her accent is stronger when she’s sarcastic Emma notes, vowing to bring it out as often as possible. “Just me and all this corn.”

“But you’ve stayed here for a long time.”

“Robin was in the navy,” Regina explains. “That’s how we met, when the first staff manned the base. It was just an outpost at first, not much more. The sailors, the marines, they were always in town at the bars. Killing time, I suppose.”

“Right, but you weren’t the only girl on the island. So you two found each other for a reason?”

“Maybe. I hope so.”

“If I’m prying into anything--”

“No, not at all. I was young, a little hesitant. I had just lost my father, which broke my heart. Then this great guy came along, and my mother pointed out I didn’t have much to lose. So I gambled. I took a chance on my first love and well, here I am.”

“So you must have come to love Iowa, too,” Emma presses. “To stay here all this time, to raise a family here.”

Regina hesitates. That, Emma did not expect.

“Oh, I know. I’m supposed to smile, and nod and tell you that the town is safe and clean, and the folks are ‘real nice’...” The affectation of a real midwestern accent makes them both smile. “And that’s all true. They are real nice. And I can send my children to school without worrying if they’ll come home every day. You get sick? The neighbors bring food for your family. Your truck breaks down? The people three farms over loan you their old one. I respect that, you know? I think that’s admirable, it’s what people talk about when they talk about a good life. About being good.”

“But…” Emma supplies. “Oh, don’t mind me. But I know when there’ s a ‘but’ coming. Go on, I won’t tell a soul, Scout’s honor.” She waggles her fingers in an approximation of their salute. 

“I think sometimes that it’s one thing to be good, and maybe another to be happy. This… this is not what I dreamed of as a girl. It’s not how I pictured the mainland, or me on it.”

“Happy endings aren’t always that easy to come by,” Emma agrees. “I think my life, although it’s pretty different, would back you up on that.”

“I think the problem is that it’s the endings we want to be happy,” Regina muses. “Don’t you? Yes, when things end it would be nice to be peaceful, to be content. But you can live a whole life first. What about all of that time?”

“Mrs Mills, I think you might just have a point there,” Emma says, fishing the Marlboros from her pocket. “Would you care for another? I can step outside if you don’t want--”

“It’s fine. And yes, please.”

Emma lights both and hands Regina’s over, and it’s just on the verge of crossing the line, offering one from her own lips like that. If she notices, Regina says nothing. When she does speak, they’re back on less philosophical ground.

“Where are you staying?”

“Uh, the something or other Lodge? It’s a bunch of little cabins, all in a row, apparently.”

“Oh, you mean Granny’s. That’s good. Very clean. Reasonable.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. After some of the dives I’ve stayed in, I’m pretty easy. Anything with running water and something like a bed, and I can make it work.”

“You’ve traveled a lot? To take these photographs, I mean?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Emma arranges her face into a modest expression. Her travel tales generally wow people, and while she wants to impress Regina, truly, she doesn’t want to overdo it too soon and bore her. “I think I’ve hit about 80 countries, at the last count. And most of this one, too. You know, we have so much variety in just the 50 states. I’m very lucky.”

“It sounds like an adventure.”

“No more than leaving Puerto Rico, not really. I guess I just do it over and over again.”

“You’re being polite,” Regina narrows her eyes in warning. “Cross over into patronizing and no more iced tea for you.”

Emma holds up her hands, before taking another drag on her cigarette. “Consider me warned. I didn’t mean to, I swear.”

“Mmhmm.”

“But yeah. I guess I always moved around a lot. Why not get paid for it, right?”

“And you’re never scared? A woman alone in all these strange countries?” Regina is challenging in the way she asks it, daring Emma to reveal some secret weakness. Emma licks her lips, takes a slow drag and considers.

“Almost never. Sure, sometimes when you don’t speak the language at all, and it’s dark and you can’t find the hotel… but honestly, I’ve slept on the street before. I can always do it again. You just have to be smart. Not draw a whole lot of attention.”

“It’s that easy?”

“Nothing’s that easy. I get all the crap from hotel clerks about not traveling with a husband, or the people trying to rip me off when I exchange my dollars. But I choose not to focus on that. It would ruin all the good parts.”

“Emma the optimist,” Regina teases. “You don’t expect that from such a seasoned traveler. Listen, would you stay for dinner? I’m eating alone otherwise, and there’s not so much choice in town.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” Emma lights up like a Christmas tree at the invitation, she can’t help herself. “I’m gonna say yes before you change your mind. You don’t get a lot of home-cooked meal invitations in my line of work.”

“Good,” Regina says, clapping her hands. “Then it’s settled. Will you excuse me? I’m just going to freshen up a little.”

“I’ll bring a couple of things in from the truck, if that’s okay?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Emma stands, half to start the task and half as a mark of respect, watching Regina cross the room and disappear up a narrow staircase that starts in the corner. Only when the heel of Regina’s sandal is out of sight entirely does Emma move. 

Well, she tells herself. There’s still no harm in looking.

***


	4. Chapter 4

Regina is practically skipping when she reaches the top of the stairs and rolls her eyes at herself as soon as she notices. What was that in the kitchen? ‘Knock yourself out’? Something Henry and his wiseass friends might say, but not a respectable housewife entertaining a guest.

And a female guest at that.

There’s something in how Emma carries herself, perhaps. The masculine swagger to her walk. The fierce independence and fearlessness, all things that Regina has associated with men in her life, never thinking to apply them to anyone else. Which is strange, now she considers it. Why should she only think of her sons, her husband, and her father in these terms, and never herself or dear friends and neighbors like Kathryn? Why not Granny who runs her inn with a shotgun proudly displayed above the check-in desk?

Shaking her head, Regina turns the shower on to get the water running and walks back into her bedroom. She’s just unbuttoning the front of her dress when movement in the yard catches her eye. Hidden by the curtains, she peeks out at the back garden.

Hidden from the road, and indeed anyone but Regina herself, Emma has sought out the water pump right by the back of the house. She pulls off her tank top, revealing a simple white bra with just a hint of lace, and makes quick work of shimmying her jeans down around her ankles, kicking them to the side with an almost childlike eagerness.

Look away, Regina chastises herself. This isn’t the changing room at a department store. They’re not little girls going swimming at the lake. Staring is far from appropriate, but Regina’s breath catches in her throat as Emma starts to work the handle, her arms flexing with each movement. Muscles have never particularly impressed Regina, growing up around so many laborers and swimmers, and if pressed she might say that she finds Robin’s bulk comforting. This, though, is something else. The lean lines of a perfectly feminine form, but instead of softness, Emma’s pale skin is taut and defined. As she splashes cold water over herself, yelping just loud enough to be heard upstairs, Regina forces herself away from the window so fast that she walks straight into the dresser. 

“Dios mio,” Regina mutters under her breath. “What is wrong with me today?”

A quick and perfunctory shower calms her, the water cool at this time of day, and only in between swirls of soap and rinsing it does she close her eyes and picture Emma again. For an unguarded moment, Regina feels her right hand slipping lower over her abdomen, but she catches herself just in time.

Blushing furiously, she turns the dial from lukewarm to freezing. When she steps out of the shower, her teeth are chattering, but it seems to do the trick. By the time she’s slipped into a fresh dress, sleeveless this time, the confusing feelings seem to have worked their way out of her system. Perhaps this neckline is reserved for the rare occasions when Robin takes her out, but her wardrobe is far from unlimited, and a guest is waiting. 

She’s leaving the bedroom when the thought occurs, and it’s the work of less than a minute to unearth the box in her dresser. When the cool gold rests against her collarbone, Regina feels fortified, ready to face whatever the day’s company might bring. The icon of St Christopher glints in the sunlight, before Regina makes her way back downstairs.

***

Emma’s hauling her bag in from the truck when Regina reappears, and they smile at each other for an awkward moment.

“If I’m um, staying for dinner, can I keep my film in your fridge? It doesn’t do well with heat, is all.”

“Sure,” Regina waves away the simple request as nothing at all. She’s changed her dress, much like Emma has opted for khaki shorts that skim her knees and a black tank top, much cooler than the outfit she’s been driving around in. There’s a dress somewhere in the crumpled mess of her rucksack out in the truck, but she doesn’t feel much inclined to put it on, not that she ever really does.

“Listen,” Emma says, pausing before opening the fridge. It won’t do to get settled and then possibly lose valuable film while being chased off with a broom. “I kind of interrupted earlier, when we were talking about me. And uh, men.”

“You don’t want to get married,” Regina responds carefully. “Or something like that.”

“Right. And the reason is--now, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but you’ve been so open with your home and your life already that I’d feel like a damn fraud to keep this from you--my romantic life is more concerned with, well, not men.”

“You date women,” Regina surmises. “I hear that happens in the cities. It’s very fashionable of you.”

“Fashionable?” Emma blurts. That’s one response she’s never heard. “Okay… uh, I guess it couldn’t matter less to you, a married woman and all. But I can’t bear false pretenses.”

“It makes no difference to me, I assure you,” Regina answers. But for a moment--a fleeting, half-breath of a moment--Emma could swear she almost looks excited at the revelation. Maybe Emma is all the stranger out here in the sticks. Maybe she wants Regina to care, wants this marriage to be some sham of convenience so that green dress ends up pooling on the floor as-- Yeah, great, Swan. Way to be the kind of predator you just took great pains to assure her you’re not. Company is enough, and from a beautiful woman at that. 

“Good, then I’ll just make some room beside the milk and the cheese for these,” Emma says, not bothering to hide her grateful smile. Acceptance in so many ways has been a rarity in Emma’s life, and the last place she expected to find it was in a farmhouse kitchen, out amongst the bridges of Storybrooke County, Iowa.

“Sit,” Regina instructs when Emma is done. “Well, you can choose the radio station before you do.”

“I caught a great station, one of the Chicago ones I think. Plays sort of blues? I don’t know if you like--”

“1410,” Regina responds, nodding to the radio over by the sink. “Good taste.”

“If you’d prefer some opera,” Emma offers.

“They don’t play the ones I like so often,” Regina sighs. “But maybe later we can put some records on. If you don’t get too bored.”

“Regina Mills, the last thing I’m likely to get is bored. Not in your company. That was quite clear when you pulled your little flower stunt.”

“Ah yes, that inherent evil of mine.”

“Right. Can I help?”

“You can sit,” Regina tells her, pulling a paring knife from the drawer. “I’m just going to roast some pork, the vegetables are easy.”

“Like perníl?” Emma asks hopefully, mangling the word a little as she tries to form it on her tongue. 

“Yes,” Regina laughs. “But we’re not on the island now, Miss Swan. You can just call it pork.”

“Point taken. But still. I can chop some vegetables. I swear, I have references.”

“How did someone who’s never home ever learn to cook?” Regina demands, taking potatoes and carrots from their respective bowls on the counter. The chopping board, Emma sees, is scored and a little battered, bearing a lifetime of use on one slab of oak. 

“You’d be surprised,” Emma tells her, stepping up to take the space next to Regina at the worktop. “A lot of discovering a country is in the food. People like to show off what they can do, and I like to listen. And learn. Plus, as a foster kid, they kept you longer if you could feed everyone else.”

“That’s… really?” Regina asks. “How terrible. To think of children as a commodity. Not to mention that my own boys would starve if that’s the case.”

“You spoil them?”

“I try not to. But they work so hard. School, of course. Then they help around here when other kids go play soccer, or hang out playing those arcade games.”

“You missing them already?” Emma teases, taking a carrot from Regina and the knife, too. Their fingers brush for a moment, but Regina is already in motion, picking out another knife, picking up a potato of her own.

“Yes and no. Peace is always beautiful.”

“Ah, Whitman. You like his work?”

“Would I quote it if I didn’t?” Regina is right back with the challenge, and Emma shakes her head. The carrot peels quickly, in long strips. A moment later she’s summoning the way one foster mother taught her to dice, in quick and even chunks, shielding her fingertips along the way. “You know Whitman?”

“I might have given you part of my sad story,” Emma snaps, hackles rising. “But believe it or not, after the foster system I worked pretty hard to make something of myself. You think they let just anyone travel the world for National Geographic? The cameras I carry around cost--”

“Hey,” Regina holds up her hands in apology. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to assume.”

“Well,” Emma sighs, letting it go. “I am large, you know. I contain multitudes, all of that.”

“Nicely done.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re good at that,” Regina nods towards the carrots as Emma starts on the next one. “I’ve always wanted an assistant in the kitchen.”

“Maybe I’ve found my true calling,” Emma replies. “Oh, the radio! I forgot.”

She crosses the room and tunes it to the station Regina mentioned. Sure enough, the static gives way to the soulful wail of a saxophone, and the answering yelp of a muted trumpet. It’s almost a dance as she saunters back to Regina’s side, picking up their simple chore in companionable silence. Only when the last of the vegetables are chopped and transferred into their dishes and pots to cook does Regina pause. She grips the edge of the sink and leans back a few inches, eyes closed to absorb the sound fully.

“Amazing,” she murmurs. “I think I like people most of all when they make something this beautiful. Don’t you?”

“It’s one way. But you’re assuming I like people.”

“Why would you travel thousands of miles to take photographs of them if you didn’t?”

“You really don’t miss a trick, do you?” Emma accuses. “If I’m going to keep up with you, I might need a little more of that delicious iced tea.”

“Coming right up,” Regina answers, and when Emma sits down at the table this time, she allows herself to let it feel, for just a moment, like home.

***

“You can wait here, if you like. I just need to fill the feed bags and check in on them. They had exercise and grooming this morning, so ten minutes, tops.”

Regina stands, opening the door onto the porch and picking up some riding boots. The afternoon sun is settling at last, but there’s still barely a breeze. The kitchen is way too warm now with the pork cooking slowly in the oven, so it’s a small relief to step outside. 

“I’ll come, if you don’t mind?” Emma asks, the last two hours having flown by as they’ve chatted. “I never did get to know horses up close and personal. A giraffe? Sure. But this is new for me.”

“They have horses in Massachusetts,” Regina points out, frowning just a little despite herself. “Just about everywhere, in fact.”

“I’m sure they do. Let me grab my camera, okay? Just for practice.”

Emma stoops to fish a small camera from her bag, checking the dials and the film in a quick routine that barely seems to last a second. Regina slips her boots on and leads the way, checking as they leave that Emma’s own workboots, men’s by the look of them, will be suitable for the messier terrain of the stable floors.

Regina talks aimlessly about the farm as they walk down to the stables, recalling for the first time in a long time just how many hectares they work, the various crops Robin rotates and the livestock that supplements it all.

"The horses, well, they're my indulgence really."

"You don't strike me as the 'I want a pony' type," Emma responds, drinking in the sight of the fields stretching out before them. Her sunglasses back in place, it's harder to read her expression, but Regina is glad to see a lazy smile on her lips at least. 

"Ponies are for babies," Regina scoffs. "Or cowards who can't handle a real horse. Like my darling Rocinante here."

She points with pride to the chestnut stallion, seventeen hands high and glossy beneath the waning sun. Beyond him, Florenz and Omar graze patiently, still too hot for their usual aimless chases around the paddock.

“That’s just one horse?” Emma yelps. “Did it eat some of the other horses?”

“No, we only have three.” Regina is confused for a moment, before rolling her eyes at the joke. “Surely the brave adventurer isn’t afraid of a horse?”

“Don’t you need a ladder to get on that thing?”

“You want me to show you?”

“In a dress?”

Regina laughs. “Emma, I’m a country girl, and I raised Rocinante from a foal. I could ride that horse in just about anything.”

“That’s very Lady Godiva of you,” Emma quips and Regina summons all of her self control not to react inappropriately to that little remark. At least Emma has the good grace to blush. “I mean, uh…”

“That would really give the neighbors something to talk about.” Regina laughs as she reaches out to stroke Rocinante, rubbing his forehead and his long nose with great familiarity. He nuzzles against her shoulder, returning the affection with one of his contented little whinnies. “Although you know that was probably just a metaphor for her generosity, right?”

“Well, the monks or whoever who wrote the story had to get their thrills somewhere, I guess.” Emma says after a moment. 

“If you wanted to go riding this week, if you have time away from the bridges, I mean… well, I used to teach. You’re not a fourth grader, but I think I can handle you.”

“Have I said something to upset you?” Emma cracks, walking in a wide semi-circle to avoid getting any closer to the huge beast. Regina can’t help but smirk at the uneasiness. Roland was braver before he could walk properly. “That you want me to actually get on one of these things?”

“Chicken,” Regina teases. “You want to wait in back of the house by the chicken coop? I can feed you all together that way.”

“I mean, she’s a pretty horse, I guess…”

“He,” Regina corrects. “If you want to, later, I’ll take you out on Florenz. He’s the real gentleman of the bunch.”

“You need a hand feeding them?” Emma’s offer is sincere but nervous.

“I’m quicker on my own. If you can wait by the gate, make sure it closes after me?”

“That much I can do,” Emma says with a salute and a sigh of relief. “Then we’re the ones getting fed, right?”

“Right,” Regina agrees. “I really won’t take long.”

***


	5. Chapter 5

When they sit to dinner, hands washed and dishes hastily laid out, Emma can’t hide her hunger. After weeks of diner breakfasts and badly-cooked burgers, it’s a treat and then some to be sitting to such beautiful food. 

She groans at the first bite of tender meat, ignoring Regina’s amusement. Even the side salad is refreshing, the lettuce leafy and crisp, the tomatoes juicy enough to make a grown woman cry. 

“Good?” Regina asks casually after a moment, taking a sip from an icy cold bottle of beer. “I wouldn’t normally drink these like this, but--”

“That’s how the beer tastes best,” Emma finishes, lifting her own bottle in a toast. “To Storybrooke County, her bridges and her produce.”

“But not its housewives?” Regina feigns offense as their bottles clink. “A girl could take that personally. Will you tell me something? Pick your favorite trip of them all, and tell me all about it.”

“I don’t wanna bore you, seriously,” Emma protests, but they both know it’s weak. “I mean, my storytelling can’t compare to the Rio Grande, or Victoria Falls…”

“Try me,” Regina insists. “And eat up. It’ll get cold.”

***

“I know I have brandy in here somewhere,” Regina calls from the pantry in the corner, while Emma dries the last of their dishes. She’d insisted, practically wrestling the dishtowel from Regina’s hands to be able to contribute. “It’s just we don’t have evening guests so often.”

“I’m fine with the beer,” Emma insists again. “Or plain coffee, I’m not so fussy.”

“Aha!” Regina emerges, a slightly dusty bottle grasped in one hand. “You’ll like this. Apple brandy. It was a gift, from Robin’s navy buddy. He knows I make cider, he thought this might make a nice change for me.”

“That’s pretty fancy,” Emma tells her, taking the bottle when Regina hands it over. They sit, and Emma pours two generous measures into wide-bottomed tumblers. “Usually don’t see this too much, outside of Northern France.”

“Don’t tell me, you’ve drunk it fresh from the vineyard,” Regina groans. “You might just be impossible to impress.”

“I’ve never tried it, in fact,” Emma lies. “I’ve always wanted to, so I guess tonight I get my chance.”

Regina beams at that revelation, and takes her glass with newfound enthusiasm. She almost throws the brandy back in one, spluttering as it burns her throat. 

Emma reaches out instinctively, rubbing circles between Regina’s shoulder blades, trying not to think about the warm skin beneath the cotton. It takes a few moments, but Regina coughs once, twice and then her breathing is back under control.

“It’s more of a sipping drink,” Emma says, avoiding Regina’s glare. “I should maybe have mentioned that when you unearthed it.”

“Maybe you should,” Regina tuts. “You want to tell me more about Cambodia?”

“No, I want to hear something about you,” Emma retorts. “I love talking about myself, but I’m hardly the only interesting person in this room.”

“What’s so interesting?” Regina says, staring the brandy bottle down in defiance before lifting it to pour a second attempt. “You know about my husband, my sons, my horses…”

“Tell me about before you met them. Before they existed, or whatever. What did you want to be as a little girl?”

“I wanted to be a princess, of course. No, not a princess. A Queen. I knew the difference, you see.”

“Admirable goal,” Emma mocks, raising her glass before taking a slow sip. “What interests you, outside of this farm?”

“Nothing. Well… no, it’s silly.”

“It can’t be. Tell me.”

“This was years ago. Before my youngest was born, even.”

“Fifteen years isn’t so long ago,” Emma argues. “And if it doesn’t matter, then where’s the harm in telling?”

“For a while, after Henry was born, I got involved in local politics for a while. It started with just leaflets, you know for the Presidential election. I wasn’t a convert, just a volunteer with a colicky baby who only slept if walked around for hours in his stroller.”

“That’s pretty cool, actually.”

Regina makes a face. This time, she sips the brandy, barely a drop passing her cautious lips.

“You want to go for a walk now?” She demands suddenly. “The moon is high, the trails are well lit.”

“Sure,” Emma agrees, finishing off her drink. “Will I be warm enough like this?”

“Yes, yes,” Regina chides, impatient to be in motion. Emma can imagine that sitting and talking like this for hours is something of a luxury for someone with a house to run. “Do you need your camera?”

“Nah,” Emma shrugs it off. “Night shots are a pain in the… well, it’s not really worth the hassle.”

“Good,” Regina leads the way, leaving half her brandy in the glass. She doesn’t lock the door behind them when they step out and Emma smiles at the trusting way of life she’s starting to forget. Her apartment has three locks and she’s thinking about a fourth. Just as soon as she’s home long enough to actually get worried about it.

They set off down a trail that wraps around the first of the cornfields, and sure enough the moon is bright enough to light every step of the way. After a few yards, Regina reaches out and links an arm through Emma’s, electrifying the skin of Emma’s forearm with that simple contact.

“Oh,” Emma murmurs, not really meaning to acknowledge it at all.

“You mind?” Regina challenges, and if there’s a test here, Emma doesn’t much care whether she passes or fails. It’s been a nice evening, and it doesn’t have to get strange. 

“I don’t mind if you don’t mind,” Emma responds. “It’s not like it’s catching, so don’t worry about that.”

“I wasn’t!” Regina snaps, withdrawing her hand so quickly that Emma almost gasps aloud. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Force of habit,” Emma replies, holding her hands up in surrender. “It’s just… I’ve known women to worry. And this is just a friendly walk, we both know that. There’s nothing in my intentions your husband would have to worry about.”

“I’m not a tractor you might steal. If there was anything to ‘worry’ about, I can worry perfectly well for myself.” Regina seems genuinely angered now, and Emma whistles through her teeth. Why did she open her big mouth?

“No, of course you’re not. I didn’t mean to make you feel like, I don’t know, a piece of property. You know I don’t think that way, I promise. I’m sorry, Regina.”

“Apology accepted,” Regina mutters, but her dark eyes are still blazing. “I suppose,” she adds a few minutes later, as they continue down the path in awkward silence. “I should consider how often people do create a fuss about something so simple. That can’t be easy to live with.”

“It’s how I live.” Emma shrugs. The world is how it is. She worries less if she just keeps moving. “You didn’t do anything wrong, I just overreacted.”

“Maybe it’s a little of both,” Regina offers, a spoken olive branch even if she doesn’t look Emma in the eye. “Shall we turn back?”

“Yeah,” Emma agrees, and she hopes not too quickly. “I should go check into Granny’s before they barricade the doors for the night. What time is sunrise around these parts?”

“About 5.30,” Regina answers without hesitation. “Sometimes about ten minutes later, but not much more than that this time of year.”

“Thank you,” Emma says, and they discuss the town and the weather all the way back to the house. In a matter of minutes she’s packed up her gear and stowed everything in the truck. She offers a hand to shake, standing on Regina’s porch. Regina grasps it, her skin hard-worked and dry even beneath the obvious moisturizing. Emma’s stunned when she’s pulled into a stiff-armed hug.

Regina releases her with a kiss to the cheek.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” she remarks, and Emma can only smile dumbly in response. She waves, dropping her hand in embarrassment, before jogging back towards the truck. A roar of the engine later and she’s in motion, glancing at the map to find her way, and to avoid Regina’s eye.

As random encounters go, it’s been pleasant. Emma figures it can’t hurt to have a relatively friendly face around town for the next few days. After all, who knows how many bridges she’ll get lost trying to find.

***

Regina clears the last of the plates and glasses, humming absent-mindedly but noticing how it echoes in the emptiness of the house. As she tips her glass of brandy out, she contrives only to splash some over her fingers. 

It would be just as easy to rinse them under the faucet, but she licks tentatively at her index finger instead. A moment later she sucks gently on that same digit, before catching her reflection in the kitchen window and stopping instantly to laugh at herself.

Whatever happened to her today--the sun, the new person in town--she can’t claim to understand. But she’ll wake up tomorrow still married, still a mother, and still living on the outskirts of Storybrooke, the two-horse town that lends its name to the whole county. 

With the dishes rinsed and drying on the rack, she decides to turn in for the night. Maybe in her dreams she’ll make sense of it, why she can see Emma’s long blonde hair every time she closes her eyes, or why the lingering scent of Emma’s musky perfume is still tickling at Regina’s nose.

Novelty, she decides. A departure from the norm. She switches each light off as she makes her way upstairs, and in a moment of decadence falls straight into bed--right in the very center--without troubling to remove her faint traces of makeup or brush her teeth.

***

Emma finds the inn without much trouble, noting its location just out back of a clean and perfectly serviceable diner. 

Granny checks her in with barely a grunt, looking up from the ledger only when she realizes that Emma is traveling alone.

“Can be dangerous out there for a lady,” Granny warns, limping slightly as she leads Emma across the parking lot to her cabin. “That’s what I’m always telling my granddaughter, Ruby.”

“I’m pretty used to being out on my own,” Emma assures her. “But you know, thanks for the advice.”

Granny looks her up and down before unlocking the cabin door. 

“No husband, huh?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Am I right in thinking there won’t ever be one, either?”

“Not if I can help it, no.”

Emma holds her breath.

“Well. Good,” Granny sighs. “Lot less trouble that way. If any of these chuckleheads in town should find that out and give you a less than friendly welcome, you send them to me, you hear?”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Don’t be so sure.” Granny hands over the key, a rabbit’s foot dangling from the keychain, fur matted from a long time in use. “Storybrooke might not be the big city. But nobody around here keeps a secret for very long.”

***

Regina bolts upright sometime around three in the morning. 

Emma isn’t coming back.

That handshake, the awkwardness… that was the demeanor of a person never intending to cross paths again. Not unless Regina shows up at Granny’s, no doubt making it on to the town gossip radar in the process.

It would be nice, though, to have a friend. Just for a few days to talk about something other than the Pastor, or the school curriculum, or the price of replacement parts for the thresher. Regina can’t bear to think she’s driven the woman away, not over a simple misunderstanding.

Mind made up, she slips out of bed and stands in the moonlight for a moment. When she pulls her dress off she stands naked in front of the mirror, considering for a moment the silvery lines left by carrying both of her precious boys. She traces the scar on her lip, the only remnant of a slip with a sugar cane as a child.

What did she want to be as a little girl? Her answer had been glib, practiced. The truth is she barely remembers, it all feels like something from half a world away. Perhaps because it is. She dimly recalls a local politician, fired up about the Naval Base plans, standing on an empty crate and pleading with the workers to resist, to rise up against their own government, one they’d barely gotten used to being ruled by, in the grand scheme of things. 

Enough, she thinks. Life doesn’t get interesting so often, and it’s wasteful to let it slip away. To let Emma Swan disappear to her next grand assignment, probably thousands of miles and a hundred languages from Iowa and her corn. 

Regina slips on her lightest coat, belting it firmly around the waist and grabbing a piece of paper from the bureau. A pen takes a moment longer, her supply continually exhausted by her sons and their sticky fingers. 

She barely hesitates before writing. 

_Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,  
Missing me one place search another,  
I stop somewhere waiting for you._

_Supper? The horses will look forward to seeing you again, especially Rocinante. Come anytime._

The drive is at breakneck speed, the truck’s only saving grace amidst a grinding gear box and busted suspension is that the lights are bright enough to illuminate the road where the moon fails to reach. At the bridge she visited with Emma earlier, Regina pulls the thumbtack she brought from the house and pins the note in place, right on the frame of the bridge where Emma was pointing her camera most of the time yesterday. There, the invitation cannot be missed.

Regina gets back in the truck, not having bothered even to switch the engine off, and swings around to head for home. This time, when her head hits the pillow, she sleeps soundly until the crowing of the rooster rouses her.

***


	6. Chapter 6

Emma drives with one eye open, racing the dawn to the Old Toll Bridge. Only when she passes the sign for Mifflin Farm does she grunt herself all the way awake. The sky is lightening by the second, and she tells herself she doesn’t much care if Regina Mills is sleeping soundly down that trail or not.

Parking off-road under the canopy of a grand old burr oak, Emma is out of the truck and in motion before the engine has wound all the way down. She practically trips down the small hill to the dried-up river bed now carpeted in wildflowers, looking up approvingly at the dark wood of the bridge looming over her. 

It’s only when she has the tripod steadied and her preferred Nikon F balanced atop it that Emma notices the piece of paper flapping in the breeze. She’s racing the sunrise here, facing east like this it should beam through the trees right above the bridge’s roof, and that’s the shot Emma’s been framing mentally since she first laid eyes on the site yesterday.

Taking the chance, she sprints up the other slope and snatches the paper, crumpling it and shoving it in the pocket of her jeans. The last thing she needs is a reputation for littering. All it takes is some busybody to write a letter to National Geographic, and she’ll be the naughty kid hauled before the principal again. Well, the next time they can force her to visit D.C., anyway.

She meters the light levels one more time, checking the viewfinder compulsively and hovering her finger over the shutter release. Emma’s pretty certain her shutter speed is configured just about perfectly, but she needs the sun to start rising to be certain of the light levels. This first round should be sidelit, capturing the angles of the bridge in a more dramatic incarnation. If she can nail that it’s just a simple run under the bridge to capture the detail of a frontlit shot, and she already knows exactly where to place the tripod. 

A smile creeps over her lips as the first strong rays of sun break through the morning sky. She’s going to get her shots.

***

Regina greets the morning with a cup of coffee, forgoing both milk and sugar in a bid to wake up quicker. Her thoughts wander to the Old Toll Bridge, wondering whether Emma is there already with her camera pointed, switching lenses or whatever a professional does with their camera. Regina thinks that one day, she might like to learn. 

She stares at her kitchen for the best part of an hour, barely moving. There’s a half-hearted attempt to begin her daily chores, but nothing seems to actually get finished as she moves things from one place to another and back again.

Then the phone rings, and she’s scrambling for the handset on the kitchen wall like she has Mercury’s wings on her heels. Out of breath, she rattles off their number, the way she’s learned to greet every caller, and pauses in both hope and expectation.

“Regina? Hi. It’s Kathryn.”

“Oh.”

“No need to sound so disappointed. You were hoping for Robin?” The clicking of Kathryn’s omnipresent knitting needles sound in the silence that stretches out.

“Yes,” Regina says finally. “He didn’t call last night, I just wanted to hear how the boys are.”

“They’re almost men, Regina. You have to untie those apron strings sometime.”

“Yeah, yeah. How’s Fred?”

“Much the same. The doctor is happy for now, that’s the main thing. Say, how about you come over this evening, we’ll have a real catchup? Eating alone can’t be fun.”

“Oh.” Regina knows she’s repeating herself. “Tonight? I can’t. I, uh, one of the horses has colic. I’ll have to take my turn walking him around.”

“Rocinante? I thought he was getting better?”

“It’s Florenz this time.”

“I see. Well, you know where we are, Regina.”

“Of course, Kathryn,” Regina feels guilty, but she hasn’t entirely given up hope.

“Did you hear about this photographer that’s staying in town?”

Regina’s heart actually skips a beat. She feels it, or at least the absence of it pounding in her chest. Almost like someone reached in and squeezed the damn thing for a few paralyzing seconds. 

“No, I haven’t been for groceries since day before yesterday.”

“Well, it’s a she. Traveling alone. Some bigshot out of Boston, didn’t show up until very near midnight, so Granny tells me. Saunters in looking for her room key like folks do that all the time.”

“Maybe they do. In Boston.”

“Anyway, she booked in for a week, so you’ll probably see her around.”

“If I need anything in town, yes.” Regina clutches the phone cord, her legs trembling with a sudden and horrid restlessness. “I really have to go.”

“Think about dinner!” Kathryn tries one more time before Regina hangs up with a flustered ‘bye’. 

She stares at the telephone for a long minute, willing it to ring again. Worried about tempting fate with another horse getting sick, Regina grabs the first pair of suitable pants and heads down to the stables. A long spell on Rocinante’s back will chase the restlessness from her bones, she’s sure of it. 

And if it doesn’t, well. She’ll deal with that hurdle when it presents itself.

***

Emma lets the phone ring and ring, knowing that the farmhouse alone is big enough for Regina to be miles from the phone, let alone if she’s out in the garden.

No answer. Emma concedes, looking at the uncrumpled note again, smiling at the sight of some of her favourite lines. The phone booth is spotless, a far cry from the graffitied one near her apartment, the glass usually broken within days of the few times its been replaced. She crosses the quiet road once again, back into the diner where a burger and a generous helping of fries are now waiting for her. 

“Eat up,” Granny warns on her circuit round the tables, leaning over Emma’s elbow as she sits at the counter. “You’re far too skinny for Iowa.”

“You keep making fries like this, you got yourself a deal,” Emma promises. “You’ve lived here your whole life?”

“There was a while there I joined the circus… nah, Storybrooke born and bred. Ain’t never seen much need to go any further. Tried Chicago once. Didn’t care for it.”

“You know the bridges… of course you do, right. Which is your favorite?” Emma takes another hearty bite of her burger. “If you had to pick.”

“Used to be a bridge was just a way of getting across water,” Granny grumbles, refilling the coffee mug of the man in a leather jacket at the end of the counter. He lifts it in a toast of acknowledgment to Granny and then to Emma, before fetching a flask from his pocket and topping it off with some kind of alcohol. “Jones, do I have to remind you about my liquor license again? Or lack of one?”

“Now, now Eugenia. The customer is always right, isn’t that so?”

“You got a problem, buddy?” Emma can’t help herself. She’s been fending off jerks like this and their entitlement for too long. Granny welcomed her and that alone buys at least a day of loyalty from Emma Swan. “Because I’m happy to help you out to the sidewalk to drink that. It’s never too soon to bring café culture to Storybrooke.”

“And you are?”

“None of your business. But Eugenia said no booze, so make sure this cup is the last time you pull that stunt, huh?”

“You challenge me like a man. Do you fight like one?” Jones stumbles as he wriggles off his counter stool. “My big brother always told me that a woman who talks too much is either a dyke or a shrew. Which are you, blondie?”

“That’s also none of your business. But I imagine a night with you--or your brother--could turn a woman to being both.”

He lunges for her then, and Emma swiftly side-steps, leaving him to clatter in a heap where she was standing a moment ago. She looks to Granny expecting recognition of her efforts, but gets only a disapproving shake of the head.

“Jones is a little sensitive on the topic of his brother. Vietnam, you know how it is.”

“Right, and I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not an excuse to disrespect you or your business, though.” Emma can’t believe it. Yet again no good deed goes unpunished, a lesson she learned over and over in the foster system. Some misplaced sense of chivalry made her step up today, and it’s already backfiring. She offers Jones a hand to help him up, but he pushes it away and leverages himself on Emma’s seat instead. 

“Perhaps you should cut your lunch short,” Granny suggests. “Don’t worry, you have a place to sleep. I just don’t want any more trouble.”

Emma pulls the cash from her wallet, slapping it down and collecting her bag from the floor.

“Oh, I won’t charge--” Granny is cut off by the door closing behind Emma with that customary jingle. She can’t help noticing how Eugenia managed to hesitate just long enough before offering that token gesture. 

Emma throws her bag into the front of the truck, but instead of following it, she slams the door and marches across to the phone box. Slipping a quarter in the slot she dials the number that’s somehow become memorized since looking it up in the directory half an hour ago.

She’s about to give up, 30 or 40 rings later, when there’s that sudden click of connection. Emma closes her eyes in thankful quasi-prayer, and is surprised when the shudder of a heavy breath is Regina’s only answer on picking up.

“Regina?” Emma tries. “You okay?”

“Ran,” Regina gasps. “Heard phone.”

“Deep breaths,” Emma cautions. “I can wait.”

“Oh,” Regina sighs, her breathing regulating fast. “Sorry, sorry.” She rolls her ‘r’s and Emma tries not to picture it, tries valiantly not to imagine the vibration across Regina’s tongue. “I was riding. I came around and heard the phone. I--oh damn--I left Rocinante right on the edge of the vegetable garden.”

“So, I got your note.”

“You did? Good. Should I expect you, or…?”

“Well,” Emma groans. “Half an hour past, I called you to graciously accept.”

“I missed that call. So what is this one for? To accept rudely?” Regina is moving around her kitchen, Emma can hear the sound of drawers opening and shutting, a glass settling on the counter, and then the quick gush of the cold faucet filling it. Something in this woman makes her appear in Emma’s head the way her photos do, the killer shots. A scene imagined, with the colors in perfect focus and unwanted obstacles shifted from view. One evening in that kitchen is enough to sear it in Emma’s memory, and she sees Regina’s movements as clearly as though they were broadcasting live on ABC. 

“I was wondering if I shouldn’t politely decline,” Emma corrects, wincing at her clumsy phrasing. “I’ve made a slightly larger impression on this town than I intended, and I wouldn’t want to drag you into any situation where people talked--”

“People talk every day, Emma,” Regina interrupts. “I assume most of the time it isn’t about me. And when it is, well, what can I do about it?’

“That’s a very philosophical approach to life.”

“Just call me Plato.”

“I think I might,” Emma teases. “Although I think your name is grand enough already. I should come for dinner?”

“Well, it’s already getting too late for lunch I suppose. What time would you like?”

“I should get some night shots down by Roseman Bridge. You know, where the lights are on either side?”

“You did your homework,” Regina says and it sounds sort of approving in a way that makes Emma feel sort of warm inside. “I don’t mind when I eat, so just give me the time. If you need the sun to set, that’s 8.30.”

“So if I take an hour and drive straight over?”

“There’ll be some pastelón waiting when you do. You drink wine?”

“Sure I do.” Emma is leaning against the clean glass now, her shoulder pressing as she does. She’s disgusted to catch her faint reflection smiling into the receiver like a giddy high school girl, and decides it’s time to end this little conversation. 

“See you later?” Regina says then, reading her mind.

“Sure,” Emma agrees. “Later it is.”

She hangs up with the phone with a little more force than is strictly necessary. Jones comes staggering out of the diner just as she gets into her truck. The temptation to reverse over him is fleeting, but it’s enough to make Emma smile as she wrangles the truck into first and peels away.

***


	7. Chapter 7

Thirty minutes after the call ends, Rocinante is safely stabled and brushed, and Regina is surveying the contents of her closet, most of it deposited on her bed. She can’t work out how the dresses she loved as a younger woman have all but disappeared, replaced by dowdy frocks that might as well be made out of curtains. The cotton dresses she’s worn in front of Emma so far have been just about serviceable, but as she eases her slightly-burning thighs out of her riding pants, there’s just nothing Regina sees that she might want to put on instead.

As she starts gathering things up to return to the rail, her eyes alight on the tin box in the bottom corner of the closet. It’s taken years to convince Robin to use the banks like a real businessman, but his compromise had been an ‘emergency fund’ kept in the house at all times. Her hands tremble as she undoes the latch, and while there’s hardly a fortune contained in the little stack of bills, there’s more than enough for the impulsive plan that’s nagging at her. 

She crosses herself, once, twice and then grabs a fistful of ten dollar bills from the tin. If she doesn’t count them, she isn’t really making a plan, Regina rationalizes. She throws on the first dress she can lay her hands on, and checks her hair in the dresser mirror. A little windblown, but it almost looks intentional. 

When she finally gets into her car, Regina turns the keys in the ignition with her eyes closed. The radio leaps into life, the blues station that’s a little crackly around the edges. It gets better when she drives, she knows that.

With a deep sigh, she realizes there’s nothing left to talk her out of this decision. Steering the car onto the road, she checks her watch and makes sure one last time that she can make it to Des Moines and back in time.

***

A nap is exactly what the doctor ordered after her horrendously early start, and Emma feels a lot of the tension dispersing from her body as she sits up and stretches. It’s a quarter after seven, not quite close enough to twilight to get anything interesting, but pacing one room for an hour doesn’t seem wise given her destination tonight.

There’s time to be wasted with another quick shower, lukewarm and really not much more than a determined trickle. When rooting through her bag for fresh clothes, Emma unearths her one good dress. It’s a little tight at the waist, but with the material being black it’s pretty forgiving. The skirt flares out enough to be distracting, and the lapels are an electric blue, drawing attention to her cleavage. Usually that would give Emma pause, too used to drawing unwanted attention. Tonight it’s more of a Hail Mary pass to see if that glimmer of something in Regina’s eyes is attraction or not.

And it won’t be. It won’t. 

***

She circles the block with the only clothes store she really knows twice, and most of a third time. Regina finally relents when a curbside parking space is suddenly freed up, and she pulls in before she can back out altogether.

A bell above the door rings when she enters, and with the interior of the store as deserted as a graveyard, it’s enough to make her jump. Guilty conscience. It takes a while for a salesgirl to emerge, barely out of school and chewing gum like one of Robin’s cows out in the field. She isn’t tall, but the heels on her feet give her an almost adult appearance. Her makeup is flawlessly applied, and possibly too old for her. With hair as dark as Regina’s own, her skin is barely sun-kissed, quite different from the other teens who spend every waking moment in the sunlight. 

“Yes, ma’am?”

The ma’am puts her teeth on edge. Regina catches her appearance in one of the long mirrors then: no makeup, hair pulled back because of the wind when she was driving. Her purse is really more of a repurposed shopping bag and her sandals are far from elegant. She looks dowdy, she thinks, and now her mission is set in stone.

“I need a dress.”

“We have a selection. Is it for a special occasion? Maybe you’re trying to impress your husband?”

“My husband? No, it’s just a dress. No occasion. A dress, a dress.”

“Well, with your coloring I would suggest something deep. Earth tones will look good, and you maybe want to stay away from pink.”

“You can tell all that just by one look?” Regina is skeptical, to say the least. 

“I’ve been working here three whole months,” the girl announces proudly, like it’s all the qualification a person could ever need. Her eyes are very pale, a blue-gray that seems to glint every time she turns towards Regina, as though they hold some unknowable secret. The girl gestures towards the first rack of dresses, gingham interspersed with garish florals. Most of them look like a barely-updated version of the ones Regina rejected at home. She smiles politely and flicks through them, but her eyes are already roving over the rest of the store.

“If I said to you,” Regina says suddenly. “Pick any dress in the store, for yourself… which would you pick?”

“I don’t really wear a whole lot of stuff from in here,” the girl fires right back. “I mean, my mom comes in to use my staff discount sometimes, or I keep her some things in back that I know she’ll like.”

“So there’s nothing you really like?”

“Well…” the girl looks around nervously, like spies might be hiding behind the mannequins. “You’re pretty slim, and it gets quiet in here sometimes, so there might be something… you have to swear you won’t tell my boss, okay?”

“My lips are sealed,” Regina promises.

“Come back through here,” the girl walks to the changing room, but instead of pulling back the curtains, she walks right inside and opens a door on the far wall. “This is what I work on when I’m trying to make the day go faster. And your husband will really, really like it I think. If it fits.”

She rifles through a pile of clothes, some with buttons and ribbons hanging from strange places, others missing sleeves or sections across their middles. 

“You do this to all the clothes?” Regina asks, both amused and horrified. “No wonder you hide this from the boss.”

“It’s only the retired stock. I want to be a fashion designer someday, and I have to practice on something.”

“What’s that purple, there?”

“That’s what I was going to show you. I made the skirt a little less big, and I put straps instead of those cutie pie sleeves, you know? The material isn’t exactly the same, but the straps are thin enough that it doesn’t show. It should fit, I think.”

“This is beautiful,” Regina breathes, reaching for the hanger as the dress is offered up to her. “You really did all this? From a pattern, or…?”

“I just see it, in my head,” the girl responds. “I just know what will look right and what won’t.”

“That’s quite a skill… I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.” Regina hasn’t torn her eyes away from the smooth fabric for even a second.

“Miranda.”

“A beautiful name. In Spanish it means--”

“To be admired. I know.”

Regina looks up then, smiling at this strangely confident girl who puts her own nervous fluttering to shame. “You really think I should try it on?”

“You should.”

Regina strides over to the curtained area, confidence growing by the second. This isn’t her quinciñera, with mother clucking every time father’s family interfered, making things too ‘provincial’. Nor is this dress one of the ruffle-covered straitjackets mother used to force on her when trying to court a suitable husband for Regina at every party they could land an invitation to.

 _Will Emma like it?”_ Regina thinks as she steps out of her everyday clothes and unzips the back of the dress. _Will I be able to hide how much I want her to like it, and on me particularly?”_

“Do you need me to zip?” Miranda calls from the other side of the curtain.

“Please,” Regina calls back. The dress is only just in position, covering her modesty, when Miranda slips into the little room. Without preamble, she adjusts the straps to sit flat on Regina’s shoulders, and pulls the zipper up with barely any resistance.

“Oh,” Regina sighs, turning slightly to take in the full effect. “You were right.”

“It looks better than I thought. It’s yours, take it.”

“I’ll just get my purse when I change.”

“No, I mean, take it.”

“I couldn’t--”

Miranda pulls the zipper back down, letting Regina step out of the dress once more. 

“Take it. Use the money to buy some shoes for it. There’s a place four blocks down, you tell Maria that I sent you. A simple black pump with that dress and it’ll be perfect.”

“I really couldn’t, Miranda. It’s so beautiful, and it’s like you tailored it just for me.”

“I’m already thinking about the next piece. I’m glad you like it, but I can’t take the money for stock I didn’t actually sell. You see?”

“You really are very kind.” Regina pulls her clothes back on in a hurry, almost overbalancing in her haste. “Perhaps I’ll come here every time I need a new dress from now on. I’ll have to start finding more reasons to wear one.”

“I’m moving to New York in the fall,” Miranda confides, looking around with that same nervousness as before. “Ever been?”

Regina shakes her head.

“You’re sure I can’t pay you for the dress?”

“Sure. Maria needs the sale more than I do.”

“Thank you, truly.”

“Make sure you enjoy whatever the dress is for,” Miranda adds as Regina heads towards the shop door. “Even if it’s not some special occasion.”

Regina ducks out into the street, sure the girl can see all her secrets somehow, and takes a moment to collect herself before hurrying the few blocks to the shoe store.

***

Emma knows she’s rushing, but the blazing sunset is doing most of the work for her. She switches the lenses out without much thought, the grooves sliding together effortlessly after so many times of repeating this very action.

She steps back to consider the composition of her final shot, but something is a little off with where the horizon is hitting. Another step back is her downfall: she stumbles into the tiny stream that runs under the bridge and very nearly lands on her ass, to boot.

While her dress is spared the worst of the muddy splash, her flat shoes and her legs are spattered pretty comprehensively. Cursing up a storm, alone in a field, Emma wishes for a moment that she’d never set foot in the state of Iowa.

Then she remembers who’s waiting for her not so very far from here, no doubt with another delicious meal, and Emma thinks it would have been worth even landing headfirst in the mud.

Shifting the tripod aligns her shot correctly, and she packs up with the quiet hum of satisfaction in her chest that accompanies a job done right. It’s been years of shooting freelance for National Geographic, never accepting the confines of their staff position with a desk in DC, and she’s confident now that she’s found the balance between her own eye for a shot and what her editor will want. Nolan’s a kindly man, more of a father to her than she’s ever asked him to be, but when it comes to photography he expects nothing less than bravery, not to mention striking the killer blow each and every time.

With incentive, Emma’s just getting to that stage faster.

Once the truck is packed up, she kicks off her shoes and wipes her legs down as best she can with water from the canteen and an old shirt she keeps in her bag more out of sentiment than practicality. Fixed up as well as she can hope for now, she frowns at seeing her dress hem has caught some of the mud damage. She’ll have to change at Regina’s if it’s too bad, but right now she’s focused only on getting there.

Emma drives as much from instinct as memory of the actual route. The roads are long and straight, rough in patches that make the suspension groan, but they don’t waste much time in getting her back to Mifflin Farm. There’s a light on the porch by the time she parks, and Regina herself steps out a moment later.

Well, hot damn.

Although the half-apron tied at the waist spoils the full effect, the deep purple dress Regina is wearing is nothing short of a knockout. Gone are the comfortable sandals or practical riding boots, replaced with the kind of heels that make Emma’s mouth water. Hell, Regina had killer legs to begin with, and this is the icing on a particularly nice cake. 

“You, uh,...” Emma fumbles for words, hopping down from the driver’s seat and slamming the door shut a little harder than necessary. She smooths out the black skirt of her dress and stares apologetically at her bare feet. “I just need to grab some things, I fell in the mud down at the Roseman Bridge, and honestly, I’m lucky it’s not worse than it already looks.”

“The dress is okay?” Regina comes down the steps, focused on Emma like a laser. “Ah, it got you right at the butt,” she sympathizes, before bursting out laughing. Emma laughs along with her.

“I could have broken my neck, you know,” Emma scolds as she retrieves another pair of shoes. 

“Not on land this flat. Here, bring the shoes, but I can clean the dress up real quick, okay? Just needs a cloth and some club soda, brings the mud right out. You’re lucky you didn’t wear white.”

“Well, it was a photoshoot, not a wedding, so…”

“You’d wear white to your wedding?” Regina fires right back as they head into the house. “What a good girl you must be.”

“Hey!”

“Kidding. I wore white to mine. Despite, well… okay, take a seat, you walking mud pie. Let’s clean you up.”

“I’m gonna mess up your… holy… what smells so good in here?”

“That would be the pastelón. Come on, it’s almost ready.”

“You’re pretty impatient, aren’t you?” Emma teases as Regina approaches with the soda in hand. “And sitting isn’t really going to get the mud off the back of my dress. Seriously, I can change, take this back to Granny’s and hit the laundromat tomorrow.”

“Nonsense,” Regina tuts. “Okay, stand then. And pull the skirt at each side so it’s taut.”

Emma complies, and a moment later Regina is rubbing the cloth over the hem of her dress. So far, so weird. Then Emma’s stomach rumbles loudly.

“Hey, you’re the one with the kitchen full of deliciousness,” Emma defends herself. “Don’t blame my stomach for wanting a vote. Oh!”

Just at that moment the pressure of the cloth is rubbing in circles over Emma’s ass and she jumps at least a few inches at the first contact. 

“Uh, warn a girl, maybe?”

“Don’t be silly,” Regina says, although she doesn’t stop and her voice sounds just a little strained. “I’m just getting the mud off.”

“I think you got it,” Emma says after a moment. “Thank you.”

“Right,” Regina pulls away like her hand is on fire. “Sit, please. No excuse this time. I don’t serve dinner to people who stand, hmm?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emma sits heavily and salutes. She catches Regina’s frown. “And I meant ma’am in the sense of sir, like in the military. Not as in ‘old lady’. In case you were the type who worried about that sort of thing.”

“Me? Pfft,” Regina scoffs. “You like plantain?”

“Sure.”

“It doesn’t taste quite the same up here, but it’s pretty close.”

“What is pastelon?”

“Pastelón.” Regina corrects the stress to the last syllable. “It’s like, uh, it’s kind of similar to lasagna, I guess? But so much better. Wait, you’ll see.”

“You’re spoiling me,” Emma announces as a basket of fresh bread is placed on the table. “Keep feeding me like this and I might never leave Storybrooke County. Granny’s coming in a strong second place.”

“The french fries, right?”

“Right. What’s her secret?”

Regina snorts. “She’ll die before she gives it up. I tried going through the granddaughter, but no luck. It’s like, instead of salt, she laces them with fairy dust or something. No matter how many on the plate, you always want just one more.”

“That’s it exactly. The woman must be a witch.” Emma squirms on her seat for a moment, and tells herself it’s just the dampness of her dress, not anything else about this free-flowing conversation that she somehow never wants to end. There’s something crackling between them in the air tonight, like sudden bursts of static from an otherwise silent radio. Which reminds Emma to stand once more and seek out some blues from the radio in the corner. Ella Fitzgerald’s sultry vocals seep out a moment later, and the evening glides from almost perfect to all the way there, just like that.

“Wine?” Regina asks, offering a bottle of red.

“Please,” Emma offers up the glass set at her place. “How did you have time to do all this, to look like that… did you skip feeding Rocinante and his friends or something?”

“You remembered his name,” Regina says softly. “No, I fed them all. I took him out for a real ride this morning, too. He’s been quite spoiled.”

“Just like me,” Emma agrees as the dish comes out of the oven. Cheese bubbling on top, it smells even better in the open air. “Do I even want to know how sinful this food is?”

“Let’s just say you’d need a while in confession,” Regina replies. She takes her seat opposite Emma, one small candle in the middle of the table between them, enough to mimic a restaurant without suggesting anything inappropriate. She raises the spoon to start dishing up their food.

“Thank you,” Emma murmurs as their eyes meet.

“You’re welcome.”

***


	8. Chapter 8

Regina is flattered by Emma’s enthusiasm for the meal, and downright flustered by the gentle moans of appreciation that greet almost every mouthful. Over the years, a grunt of acknowledgment is the most she’s come to expect, from men and boys too hungry to even really taste whatever they’re shoveling into their mouths. Not long after they married, Robin asked her to ‘tone it down’ on the spices, pointing out that his mother’s meatloaf didn’t need any such thing. The implication that he preferred it rankled Regina, but back then she’d been so intent on fitting in to small-town life that it hadn’t been worth the protest.

“You should have a restaurant,” Emma sighs happily. “You’d put Granny and her fries out of business, even.”

“You’re flattering me,” Regina dismisses the compliment, hiding her smile with another mouthful of beef and cheese. 

“Flattery is the least you deserve.” Emma is devastatingly sincere, eyes twinkling with the light of the candle. “And I swear, every word is the gospel truth.”

“More wine then, for your silver tongue.” Regina lifts the bottle without waiting for an answer, surprised to see this refill polishes off the bottle. That’s fast, by her standards. Often she’ll drink one glass with the rest left in the fridge for adding to her cooking. 

“I brought another bottle,” Emma remembers, smacking her forehead. “But like a dolt, I left it in the truck.”

“We’ll get it. No rush.”

“You’re very understanding.”

“So they tell me. Actually, no one tells me that. But tonight? Maybe my temper doesn’t run so hot. You’re lucky.”

“I really am,” Emma agrees. “I can’t tell you how many nights I end up eating a crappy meal in a greasy diner somewhere. Change the country and change the food on the plate, but the experience is usually the same. But every so often there are nights like this. People who open their homes to me. It’s really a great kindness.”

“If you were a man…”

“What? Ask anyway.”

“If you were a man, I’d ask if you have a woman in every port. I don’t suppose it works quite the same for you?”

“It’s not so different. I’m a lesbian, not a nun.”

“That’s good. I prefer lesbians.” Regina shivers at saying the unfamiliar word out loud. 

“Not a fan of nuns? Why’s that? Is it the way they look like grandmas, but in a penguin costume?”

Regina snorts with laughter at that. “No. I went to Catholic school, you must have guessed? Nuns are very strict. Especially with little girls who want to ride their horses or go help with the cane harvest instead of learning their _catecismo_.

“Always the rebel, huh? I guess I can relate to that. I only got stuck with the nuns for a year, though. One of my foster families were super Catholic.”

“You didn’t stay?”

“Apparently even good Christians will return the kid who steals from the church collection plate.”

“Ouch. And that’s quite a sin.”

“Is it a sin to ask for seconds? This pastelón is worth going to hell for.”

“You think you’re going to hell?” Regina hesitates with the serving spoon in her hand. 

“Everyone says I am. Probably better not to be surprised, right?” Emma eyes the heaping of plantains on her plate with gratitude. 

“Because why? You kiss other women?”

“Well, it’s usually a little more than that.” Emma looks down at her plate, but the blushing doesn’t stop her from spearing the first mouthful with a twirl of her fork. “But essentially, yes.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. The god my father told me about? He wouldn’t punish one person for kissing a woman, but pardon another for kissing a man. That’s… it’s small. Petty.”

“Well, apparently in a world full of war, and famine, and terrible crimes, that’s what God has chosen to focus on.” Emma shrugs. “I don’t think it can hurt me so bad if I don’t believe in any of it, right?”

“It’s worth it, then?” Regina has been dying to ask, and thinks she might finally see an opening. “You like being with women so much that if they’re right, it would be worth eternal damnation?”

Emma chews in contemplation for a moment, avoiding Regina’s eye. The saxophone on the radio wails an especially plaintive bar or two, and the world seems to pause with Regina as she awaits Emma’s response.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. I could live a lie instead. I could pretend to be happy. Why, this very afternoon I could have landed myself the town drunk--Jones, is that his name?--but I don’t think that just because something is easy, or safe, that it happens to also be right.”

“You don’t?”

“In fact, I think the things most worth having are the things worth fighting for. At least, that’s been my experience.”

“So, to come back to my original question…”

“Which was?”

“A woman in every port? Or is there someone back home, in Boston?”

“There’s no one. No one in particular. That’s not really how I live.” Emma looks uncomfortable now, but it doesn’t deter her from continuing to clean her plate. “Anyway…”

“You don’t like to talk about this, do you?”

“I guess people don’t usually like to listen.”

“Is it so different? I mean, really?”

Emma finishes her food, and lets her fork drop to the plate. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t know if this is a great topic for us. You’re a very attractive woman, Regina. You must know that. And I’m trying to stay on the side of common sense here. This curiosity you might have? That’s great. Explore that if you want. But I’m not about to let myself get made a fool of in the process.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t talk to you about kissing women if I don’t intend to kiss women? Is that how it is?”

“Right.” Emma reaches for her wine. “I’m not assuming anything. It’s just that I used to assume real quick, and that leads to all kinds of misunderstandings.” Regina stands, and she should be angry, but the temper is bubbling on a low heat, somewhere she can’t quite access right now. “Did I tell you how beautiful your dress is? Because it really is.”

Regina stalks her way around the table, whisking both of their plates away and depositing them in the sink. Emma pushes her chair back from the table a little, clearly ready to bolt at the first word from Regina to say she’s no longer welcome. It’s a moment of madness in the making, but suddenly Regina knows her next move.

She lays one hand on Emma’s shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance. 

“I got this dress today.”

“You did? What, all this and you had time to shop, too?” Emma smiles, and Regina leans a little closer. 

“Emma, I--”

“Listen, if you’re about to do what I think you are… I’m not going to apologize. You’re the married one. It’s your decision.”

Regina flinches at the mention of her marriage, but to her surprise she can shrug it off a second later. The insistent ache inside her since Emma first smiled at her across the porch is something deafening now, drowning out all argument and objection. Regina recognizes it at last. 

She wants Emma. 

The tension between her thighs, that she’s wet without even being touched yet: it’s so much more than anything she’s felt before. It’s so far beyond ‘nice’ or ‘sweet’, all those adjectives that she’s learned to settle for, that it feels like a foreign language. And Emma?

Emma is her Rosetta Stone, her translator. Something beautiful and interesting to run her fingers all over, someone to learn from. With more grace than she expects given the chaos in her head, Regina raises her leg and very gently straddles Emma’s lap. With her other hand, Regina grips Emma’s other shoulder, the gesture as certain as a lock clicking shut.

“It’s my decision,” Regina whispers, her eyes flickering closed as she leans in to take that first kiss. She wants so badly to look, to see this dizzying lust reflected on Emma’s face, but some habits die very hard, and it’s all the more romantic to see nothing when their lips meet, to focus exclusively on the velvety press of Emma’s mouth against her own.

“God,” Emma gasps when Regina finally relinquishes that first kiss. “You don’t really believe in half measures, do you?”

Regina shakes her head. Her gaze is fixated on Emma’s lips, a little shinier now. 

“Sure you don’t want that other bottle of wine?” Emma’s hands are on Regina’s waist now, her grip firm as she massages gently on either side. 

“Nuh uh,” Regina whispers against her ear, taking the chance to kiss the side of Emma’s neck. “I don’t want this to be hazy.”

“You’re sure?” Emma whispers, her voice ragged as Regina kisses her neck again. “Oh god, you seem pretty sure.”

“Come on,” Regina urges, getting up and taking Emma by the hand. “Show me. Show me all the differences. Show me why it’s worth it, Emma.”

“Upstairs?” Emma turns them around, leading the way now.

“No!” Regina panics for a moment. The confidence deserts her momentarily and she freezes in the doorway of the kitchen. “I mean. Not in the bed. That’s too much, I think. But in here…”

Emma takes her cue and guides Regina into her own sitting room, stealing kisses with every step. Their progress seems so slow and yet Regina is determined to linger, to soak up every moment of it. She watches, fingers dancing over her lips, when Emma eventually breaks away to do some frantic rearranging of the furniture.

The coffee table is shoved aside, and both couches are divested of their cushions. For a moment, it looks like one of the forts the boys used to make and the pang of guilt is enough to send Regina reeling for a moment. But Emma flattens the cushions into an impromptu mattress with a few moves, and then the blankets are being pulled down to make covers, not that Regina intends to hide under them, not tonight.

“The lights?” Emma nods towards the lamp in the corner.

“Keep them on,” Regina insists. “I want to see you.”

“Well, I definitely want to see you.” Emma sweeps Regina off her feet with the next kiss, holding her firmly and leveraging the slight height difference between them. They sink, gradually, towards the cushions on the floor, Emma controlling their movements until Regina is lying beneath her, trading kisses that are increasing in passion and decreasing in precision at roughly the same rate. 

However much she touches, tastes, it’s not enough; Regina understands what people mean by addiction now, she thinks. It feels like it won’t be possible to stop kissing Emma’s mouth, or the soft planes of her skin that taste faintly of salt, and soap, and maybe just a hint of the freshness of the Iowa air.

***


	9. Chapter 9

There’s a little voice still screaming, but it gets fainter with every cushion Emma throws on the well-swept floor. When she reaches for Regina there’s still an expectation of stopping, of being told that the daring has run out once again. It’s hard to reconcile with the way Regina has been kissing her, but Emma is nothing if not an expert in how quickly passion gives way to rejection.

Answering a question that Emma is both too breathless and too terrified to ask, it’s Regina who pushes things forward, reaching around to grab Emma’s ass. At first it’s a simple clutching through the damp fabric of the black skirt, but a moment later Regina’s hand retreats. Before Emma can sigh the disappointment into their kissing, Regina’s fingertips are exploring beneath that same damp fabric, tracing featherlight lines up the back of Emma’s thigh until her ass is right back in grabbing range. 

Emma expected slow progress. She’s been steeling herself for the prospect of fumbling touches and hesitant questions over what to do and how. Regina apparently didn’t get that memo, their bodies pressing together as hands explore, and if it’s tentative at all then it’s only because neither can bear the thought of this ending too soon. 

As gorgeous as the dress is, and as silky as it is to the touch, Emma can’t resist reaching for the zipper when Regina arches up off the cushions. Somehow she’s become the blushing virgin in all this, unable to concentrate on more than one task at a time, while Regina’s movements are fluid and there isn’t even a flicker of hesitation.

“Ssh,” Regina murmurs against Emma’s cheek a moment later. “I can hear you thinking.”

“I just want it to, I want it to be…” Emma loses her train of thought as Regina nips at her earlobe. “Fuck.”

“Profanity,” Regina tuts. “And you haven’t even seen me naked, yet.”

It’s the chuckle Emma needs, a pin in the bubble of tension that’s been building, and they’re both laughing when their lips meet again. 

“Now, about that nakedness,” Emma says with a grin. She pulls back just far enough to turn Regina on to her front, straddling across her backside with something more like the usual Emma Swan confidence. Unzipping Regina’s dress is better than any Christmas morning dream that young, giftless Emma could ever have imagined. The lines of her back are exposed inch by inch, and it’s only when Emma leans forward to kiss the exposed skin, open-mouthed and eager that she even registers the absence of a bra. “Didn’t want to waste lingerie on me, huh?”

“I had no bra without, you know, the straps,” Regina says after a breathy little moan. “And then I figured, why bother with panties either? If you didn’t take the hint quickly enough, maybe that would have convinced you.”

Emma actually gasps at that, and if she rolls her hips just a little against the curve of Regina’s ass then, well what sane person could blame her? 

“Consider me convinced.” Regina turns them then, using surprising upper body strength to have Emma be the one on her back. Pinning Emma’s wrists above her own head, tugging slightly at her hair which must be a wild blonde mess already, Regina leans to claim a slow and deliberate kiss, her tongue teasing and flickering against Emma’s lips and then her own tongue in turn. When Regina’s mouth charts a trail across Emma’s jaw and down the sensitive lines of her neck, there’s no chance of holding back.

“You’re, uh, taking charge?” Emma whimpers as Regina’s teeth graze her collarbone. 

“Why not?” Regina murmurs. “I didn’t sign up for a tutorial. Let me try, and if I’m wrong, then maybe you can give the directions.” She sucks deliberately over the patch of tender skin where Emma’s pulse is thundering like skies in the dying days of summer. She wriggles her hands free for a moment, intent on touching and staking a claim for dominance, but Regina pins her wrists again effortlessly. “Let me. Please.”

Emma can’t say no to that. 

She sinks back against the cushion and lets Regina’s mouth work its way over every inch of exposed skin, Emma’s dress just seeming to fall open at the other woman’s deft touch. That same touch results in one palm, and then the other--Emma leaves her hands above her head, be a good girl, get the reward--pressed against the curves of Emma’s breasts. Her nipples pebble at the contact in the cool evening air, and they’re sensitive enough for each caress to feel like a jolt of electricity all the way down to the meeting of her thighs.

The first whisper of Regina’s mouth on Emma’s bared breast is a dangerous moment, one that might well have exploded, but Regina pulls away again, leaving only the ghost of those velvet lips. It’s easy, then, to muster a certain sympathy for overly-enthusiastic teenage boys. With less control over her body, Emma might very well have come right then, embarrassing them both in the process. Goddammit, she isn’t giving in to that pleasure until she at least has her underwear off. 

Perhaps her own knife-edge intensity does it, but for a moment Regina seems thrown. That early confidence evaporates and she kneels over Emma in confusion.

“What?” Emma asks. 

“I just… how do you choose? I want to do everything to you. All at once.”

“Well, the fun part of this is whatever you don’t do this time? We can pretty much start over right away. So…”

Regina’s smile could illuminate every last one of these Iowa cornfields. She kisses Emma again, long and deep. It’s a long time before they come up for air, and if Emma thought she understood turned on before, that was nothing compared to the way her every nerve ending is singing out. 

The rest of Emma’s dress is pushed down her legs then, and before her underwear can follow, Regina is sliding down her naked body, nipping and teasing at the top band of elastic with a certain playfulness. Emma’s hips arch upwards of their own volition, and Regina seems to take great delight in pinning her down.

With the heel of her hand, Regina presses against Emma through the plain cotton panties. It doesn’t take an invitation for Emma to grind against the pressure, her breath coming in sharp little pants already. Before she can get used to one sensation, Regina has captured a nipple again, flicking her tongue back and forth over the hardened nub with a lot of promise for where else she might make that same motion. 

When they kiss again, it’s a little more frantic and there’s a bumping of noses, a brief confusion over whose head should tilt which way, before they make the connection. Laughing into the kiss, Emma pulls Regina closer. No longer can her hands wait above her head, Emma needs to touch and to hold on now. 

“You’re so… wow,” Regina breathes as she pulls Emma’s panties down sharply and runs a finger through slick wetness. “All for me, hmm?”

“It’s either that or I really liked your cooking.”

“Either way, I take the compliment.” Regina smirks before adding a second finger, the stroking pleasant enough but sort of aimless at first. “Give me just a moment,” she whispers, screwing her face up in concentration. This time her touch is much more sure, and her fingertips slide directly over Emma’s clit, making her cry out at the much-needed pressure.

Which, coincidentally, is the point where Emma decides that slow and steady is definitely best saved for round two, and if she doesn’t touch Regina in a more meaningful way soon she really might explode.

Using the leverage of her thigh between Regina’s legs, Emma rolls them into a more accessible position. Regina is soaked against her thigh, too, that promise of no underwear apparently genuine. 

“Forgive me,” Emma practically grunts the words. “If there’s a slight lack of finesse.”

“To hell with finesse,” Regina growls and they’re kissing once more, open-mouthed and not too precise, but it leaves them breathless all the same. Emma is the one to make bolder strokes with her fingers at first, leading the way to pressing two, and then a third inside Regina, who moans low and lustful the whole time. She manages to keep pace with Emma, following her example of flexing and curling fingers, their rhythms slightly syncopated but the determination exactly the same.

“More,” Emma urges, though with a gun to her head right now she couldn’t say more of what, exactly. Just more touching and feeling and more Regina, whose head is tilting back and practically begging Emma to kiss her neck one more time. And who is Emma not to oblige? Being with Regina after all these months alone is like running through a waterfall, and this rush of emotion behind the simple touches is something Emma hasn’t experienced since those first few times, those furtive touches that left her so overwhelmed that she didn’t remember to breathe. 

Really, what she can’t believe is that she’s traveled to the ends of the earth to experience something like the rush she’s riding right now, on a farmhouse floor in rural Iowa. If there is a God, that’s one hell of a tricky sense of humor.

“Is it… am I?” Regina is losing her confidence along with the end of her sentences, but her fingers don’t stop working, and Emma can only nod in encouragement. 

“Yes. God, yes. Just like this.”

“Can we… together?” Regina meets her gaze then, and something in the moment when their eyes lock is the push towards climax that Emma can barely resist. “So close,” one of them gasps, and Emma isn’t even sure which one of them admits it first.

“Please,” Emma whines, not exactly proud of the indignity in that. She has seduced and charmed and asked very nicely before, but she’s never ever been one to beg. The prospect of Regina’s deft fingers making her come though, is enough to make Emma willing to prostrate herself and plead if it becomes necessary. 

And okay, so maybe it’s not quite together and there’s a heart-stopping moment where Emma thinks she isn’t quite going to get there because the pressure has slipped just ever so slightly. But Regina shifts at the right moment, and everything is right back on track. Honestly, it’s more the little huff of satisfaction from Regina that final pushes Emma over the edge, the pulsing between her thighs as stunning as the way her heart is pounding against her ribcage. It only takes a moment more of concentration, of willing some more power into the thrust of her fingers, but Emma falls back in relief as Regina tenses hard around her fingers. 

They lie there together, breathing ragged and bodies slick with sweat. It’s a muggy evening, even for Iowa, and any other time Emma would wriggle her way free and under the nearest faucet. Right now, the feel of Regina against her is more than she can bear to give up.


	10. Chapter 10

“Is this the part where you tell me it was a horrible mistake?” Emma’s voice sounds so fragile, and Regina squeezes her eyes closed as she considers.

“I think it’s supposed to be,” she concedes. “I’m supposed to weep and wail, throw you out into the night to atone for my mistakes?”

“Right,” Emma shifts, sitting up. The lines of her bare back are like a magnet for Regina’s fingers, and the upwards motion is halted by nothing more complex than the simple act of Regina tracing invisible circles with her fingertips.

“I said ‘supposed’,” Regina reminds her. “I’m not saying that there’s no guilt in this cocktail; I can’t just forget who I am, what my life is. But I know for damn sure that the last thing I want right now is to let you go.”

Emma’s hair is so long, undone like this. She sweeps it back over her shoulders and Regina sits up too, running her fingers through it and lightly massaging Emma’s scalp until she relaxes again.

“That’s very soothing,” she mutters. “If I ever find a monster in the closet, I know what to do now.”

“If there’s a monster, you shouldn’t be soothed. You should get angry, get ready to fight.”

“There’s that temper you warned me about, huh?” Emma turns then, her eyes roving Regina’s face, and then more brazenly over her naked body. “You can be pretty scary when you want to be.”

“I don’t want to be,” Regina tells her, taking Emma’s face in her hands. “Not with you. Never with you, okay?”

“I can’t promise--”

“The rest of the week? Surely even you can promise me that, Emma Swan.”

“You got it,” Emma replies, her chuckle sounding pretty hollow. “I’m saying I can’t promise that’s going to be enough.”

“Well, like these bridges you’re taking photographs of,” Regina teases. “We’ll cross that when we come to it, no?”

“You can’t be this gorgeous and funny, too,” Emma warns. “That’s not playing fair at all.”

“Fair is for good girls,” Regina tells her, letting her palms drop away from Emma’s cheek. She leans in for yet another kiss instead, moaning in satisfaction when Emma kisses back fiercely, more of the sucking and biting down that crept in during the more frantic moments between them. “Stay, tonight.”

“I could go back to the cabin--”

“Stay.” 

Emma agrees with another kiss, taking Regina’s wrists and holding them behind her back.

“I hope your breakfast is as good as the diner’s.”

“Better.”

***

At first, she thinks it’s a scream.

But no, an honest-to-God rooster wakes Emma with a fright, rousing her from the deepest part of her sleep. She squints at the sunbeam attacking her eyes from where the drapes haven’t been drawn, and finally looks across at the still-sleeping Regina, once her vision is no longer blurred by dancing dots of light.

Gorgeous.

Even with her face mashed against a pillow and hair sticking out in seven different directions, there’s no denying that Regina is beautiful enough to take Emma’s breath away. Nothing hanging in the Louvre ever had this effect, that’s for damn sure.

The telltale discomfort is creeping up Emma’s spine, like someone dancing on her grave, but she wills herself not to shiver, not to panic and hit the road like normal. It’s time-limited for once, so why not get the most out of the situation before returning to the loneliness of the rest of her life?

That’s why, when she gets up and wraps a throw around her otherwise naked body, she only moves as far as the kitchen. Although she stares out of the window for a while, drinking in the sunny quietness of the summer morning, there’s no genuine impulse to go any further. She fastens the blanket into a sort of toga and takes a peek inside the fridge. Cooking may not be her strong point, not even close, but she’s mastered the sacred art of breakfast at least.

She’s well on to flipping the French toast when Regina appears at the kitchen door, sleep-rumpled and wielding some kind of ornament like a weapon.

“Good morning to you too,” Emma snorts, nodding at the improvised cudgel. 

“Oh,” Regina puts it on the counter, pulling her own blanket tighter around her. “I thought someone had… but then I could smell cooking. Honestly, I thought I was still dreaming.”

“Well, when it comes to breakfast, or what happened between us last night? That was definitely real. If that clears anything up.” Emma turns her attention back to the stove, self-conscious all over again. Maybe now her reward for not fleeing will be getting kicked out instead.

Instead, a moment later, Regina is wrapping her arms around Emma’s waist from behind, careful to avoid contact with the frying pan. 

“I know that was real. I don’t think I’ll be able to forget.” She lays her head against Emma’s shoulder, and it’s nowhere near as awkward as it should be. Emma flips the slice she’s working on straight on to the waiting plate and turns the burner off.

“This should be enough to refuel on,” she says by way of explanation, but neither one of them moves. Eventually, Regina presses a kiss at the base of Emma’s neck, lingering enough to promise something more, and soon. First, she whisks the plate towards the table and with a liberal dousing of syrup later, they’re picking at the stack with forks and then with sticky fingers. And then those sticky fingers are just too tempting to resist, and licking them clean turns into something much more fun than breakfast.

Regina licks and kisses her way from Emma’s trembling thighs right up to her mouth, and it’s not even uncomfortable to be lying naked on the linoleum in this farmhouse kitchen, that’s how good it feels. Emma pulls Regina close again, trading some sticky kisses before urging Regina up on her knees.

***

And oh, Emma is so wickedly talented with her tongue. For all the times she seems uncomfortable talking, her mouth might just be Regina’s favorite thing about her. The linoleum is cool against Regina’s knees at first, but before long her skin is sticking, clammy against the hardened plastic.

Emma massages with her fingers, first on the sensitive skin of Regina’s inner thighs, and then it’s more of a rhythmic clutching of her ass cheeks, one that causes Regina to rock against the licks that are slowly driving her wild. 

Before long, Regina has to close her eyes. Not simply to indulge in the sensation, but to block out the sights around her. The usually spotless counters where Robin would hoist himself up and regale her with tales from the farm over a cold can of beer. The doorway into the living room where both boys’ heights are marked in an assortment of colored pens. The table itself, the site of a hundred arguments and a thousand moments of raucous laughter. 

She closes her eyes, but doesn’t stop. Regina isn’t sure she could stop now, even if she wanted to. She’s bracing herself with one hand clutching the back of a kitchen chair, the wood worn and familiar beneath her palm. The other hand is clamped over her mouth, her orgasm (when it comes) is a series of sobs against her own skin, until she realizes she’s biting down and Emma isn’t really letting up at all.

When Regina moves, or more like she falls forward, Emma is on her right away, soothing away whichever guilt has shown on the surface. They kiss once more, a pair of addicts with no intention of finding the cure. Nobody speaks, as Regina traces a line across Emma’s mouth, before tasting herself again on soft skin. Their breathing overlaps, and it’s almost enough to soothe Regina back into sleep, uncomfortable floor be damned.

***

“You really have to go?”

“I should. I made this whole schedule. And Tinker’s Bridge is, what, three towns over?”

“You want to shower?”

“Either that or you can hose me down in the yard,” Emma teases. “Maybe I should shower at the cabin. Need some clean clothes anyway. And anything but a dress.” It’s impossible to keep the frown from her face, but Emma doesn’t mind when that makes Regina laugh out loud. 

“I would come along, but I’m expecting a call today. Enrique, his goats. You know how it is.”

“Sure I do. People call me every other day about their goats,” Emma replies, because if she makes a joke about it then the mention of Regina’s kid, and the real life that will roll back into town with him, won’t be such a shard of glass twisting in Emma’s heart. 

“Give Granny my love,” Regina offers, leaning against the doorframe to make sure Emma doesn’t leave without bestowing at least one more kiss. There’s a real thrill in being looked at so hungrily, and Emma isn’t sorry that it puts a little extra sway in her hips as she approaches.

“Maybe I’d better not,” Emma murmurs, before taking her kiss, tender and leisurely like they both have all day. “Or she’ll be wondering just how I came into possession of it.”

“Good point,” Regina concedes, resting her forehead against Emma’s. “Go on, then. Get outta here before I drag you back inside and take all those clothes back off you.”

“Would you like me to come back tonight? I don’t have to, I mean--”

“Please.”

Regina’s answer is a plea and a command all in one. In that simple syllable she is the queen of her name, imperious and demanding. Emma is the besotted courtier, ready to crawl on broken glass just to worship at the throne.

“I’ll call. When I’m done with the bridge.”

“You’d better,” Regina warns.

***

Her bravado deserts her about the same moment that Emma’s truck finally trundles out of earshot. Turning back to take in the sight of her house, Regina no longer sees a homely, if slightly battered, piece of domestic bliss. The shingles loom over her, the splits in the wood that always seemed so charming now look as worn out as she currently feels.

The warning is clear: break this family, break this vow of close to twenty years, and she might as well pull their home apart with her bare hands. Her knees feel weak, suddenly, wrapped in a blanket on the porch like some kind of… even in her head, Regina doesn’t dare finish that sentence. The words form anyway, in vitriolic Spanish and English alike. 

She stumbles towards the porch swing, she has the instinct to do that much before her legs give out altogether. Adultery. In a thousand idle fantasies she’d never considered it that way. All those times her mind had wandered, in daydreams or during less inspiring tumbles with Robin, it had been pure imagination. Nothing that could have breached the vows that she’d willingly made, body and soul.

And what excuse does she have? Robin may not be attentive these days: at his age, after a life of working the land, he falls asleep not long after supper most nights. What little opportunity they might have is usually dismissed by one of the boys needing attention, or Regina’s own indifference. He never pesters, never seems to think of relations between them as his due, but even so Regina knows that in a hundred years Robin would never accept this kind of betrayal. Woman or not, isolated incidents or not, it would be the kind of disloyalty he could never understand. 

It’s only when a breeze stirs her that Regina realizes the spectacle she must be making of herself, how lucky she’s been that no one has come calling. Kathryn appearing with a cobbler, or one of the farmhands coming up from the fields is hardly outwith the realms of possibility, even if their work is at its very quietest this time of year. She’s ready to scramble back indoors when the faint sound of an approaching vehicle freezes her. 

Familiar. It’s a particular hum and rattling of gravel that she recognizes. Panicked, she wonders how in the hell she can explain the state of the kitchen, the living room, of her own sticky and faintly-marked body. The smell of sex is suffocating in that moment, drowning out everything else around her. The boys might not notice, but Robin, oh God, he’ll know just by looking at her.

That’s when Regina realizes that the familiar sound is a new one, not one she’s been hearing for years. That Emma, in the process of turning right around after about five minutes, has almost given Regina a heart attack, right there on her own porch.

“Hey,” Emma says a small eternity later, jumping out of the truck and bunching her hands in her dress in that sheepish way she has. It’s competing with far too many things to be one of the traits Regina likes best in her. “Okay, so I never do this, but… maybe I could hang around, today? The bridge will be there tomorrow.”

“No, it’s being demolished this afternoon,” Regina fires back, simply because she can. Emma’s face falls for an instant before she cottons on to the teasing. “Come, Miss Photographer. I think we could both do with cleaning up, don’t you?”

Regina extends her hand, and barely a second later Emma is grasping it. They both look away, because that way nobody can say anything stupid about just how right it feels. 

***

“So,” Regina asks, fresh from her phone call and leading the way down to the stables once more. Emma had done the decent thing and stepped outside, but even without the exact words being clear, there had been no mistaking the love in Regina’s voice as she spoke to her family. “Am I putting you on your own horse? Or are you riding with me?”

“Depends,” Emma answers, leaning in dangerously close. Something about that intrusion of real life, barely twenty minutes after they’d stepped out of a long bath they’d shared, has made her want to compete for that affection. “How tight are you gonna hold on to me?”

“Just for that, you’re going on Florenz,” Regina warns. “Everyone should learn how to ride for themselves. It’s the closest thing to freedom.”

“And yet here you are, forever forty miles from nowhere,” Emma cracks, barely getting the words out before wanting to bite them back in regret. “I mean, uh--”

“No, no. It’s not like I can deny it. We can’t all live lives that end every five days, after all.”

“Hey!”

“What? Aren’t we just being honest?”

“Listen, if this is some guilt trip because you just spoke to your kid--”

“Oh, I’m not allowed a moment to react? I should forget everything in my life because you happened to get lost in the cornfields?”

Somewhere in the verbal back and forth, Regina has pulled away, and Emma is practically running after her to hurl the next barb. Only when she opens her mouth to conjure up something else cruel, it just won’t come. 

“Regina, wait. Please.”

She comes to a halt, at least. Emma takes that as small victory number one.

“I don’t ever want to be the thing that makes you miserable. If you regret it too much, or you just don’t want to deal with me, say the word and I’ll run right back to my truck. Like you said, I’m an expert in walking away and starting over.”

“You would do that?” Regina turns, the question in her eyes is a dangerous one, but Emma doesn’t even flinch. “Just to spare me?”

“I think I’d do just about anything for you.” Emma stares at the ground as she makes the admission. “Which is pretty scary, for someone like me. But right now? The only way I’m leaving is if you want me gone. Otherwise, can we maybe start again with the whole talking situation?”

“Maybe we should stick to less difficult activities?” Regina’s forgiveness, when it comes, rolls outwards like a wave of warmth that outmatches even the late morning sunshine. 

“Sure. Like riding a death monster into the woods?”

“Exactly.”


	11. Chapter 11

“I knew it!” Emma screeches from somewhere just in front. “I am a goddamned natural!”

Regina shakes her head. She won’t point out that Florenz is the most docile animal she’s ever encountered, and having experienced so many young riders in his life, there’s almost nothing Emma could do that would surprise him. Instead, she lets her lover-- _oh, dios mio, lover_ \--enjoy her communion with the world of nature.

“There’s a stream just up ahead. Stay this side of it, okay? That’s the border of my land.”

“Wait, how do you brake on a horse?”

Regina gees Rocinante up and in a few strides Emma is in sight again, bobbing enthusiastically in the saddle. While that would get her thrown off a more nervous animal, Florenz plods along, mostly ignoring it. By the time Regina has drawn level and laid her hand on Emma’s over the reins, both horses are slowing instinctively at the sound of the stream up ahead.

“Just pull up,” Regina instructs, and Emma obeys immediately. If Emma’s dismount is a little clumsy, at least she manages unaided. Regina slips off her horse right after, pulling the packs from the saddle. “Now, usually we’d tie the horses to a tree while we have our picnic, but these fellas are real homebodies. They never get too far from me.”

“If you’re sure? I sure as hell don’t feel like walking as far as we just rode.”

“It’s nicer here, in the shade.” Regina leads the way, laying out a blanket that’s frankly a little too new to be thrown down on the grass, but musty old horse blankets wouldn’t exactly have set the mood. “Tell me something, while I set up. One of your stories.”

“Like what?”

“Well, tell me how you came to love the camera… if it’s not too personal?”

“I made you come so hard this morning you almost passed out on your kitchen floor,” Emma reminds her, swooping in to steal a kiss that interrupts preparations for quite a while. “So, uh, I don’t think we have to worry about personal, do you?”

“I like when you talk like that,” Regina murmurs while staring down at her hands. “I’ve never… sometimes I think I want to, the words are just begging to be said. But they trip off your tongue like you say them every day.”

“You can say them with me,” Emma reassures, squeezing Regina’s knee. “I’ll get out of your way a minute, or we’re never going to eat. This stream is fine to wash up, right?”

“You’re really so unclean? We did bathe, you know.”

“Horses. Outdoors. Get me ten miles from air-conditioning and I can’t get enough of washing.”

Regina chuckles. Not such a farm girl, this one. Even for all her adventures. 

“The stream is fine. And hurry back, I want to hear the story of how Emma Swan fell in love with taking photos.”

***

“Sure,” Emma promises, walking down the gentle slope. She pauses for a moment, reveling in looking back at Regina while she’s distracted. Unpacking something wrapped in foil, others in brown paper. There’s a bottle of wine, the one they didn’t drink last night, and the efficiency of how Regina arranges it all is quietly impressive.

Emma looks away before she can be caught staring like a lovesick puppy. She pulls her boots off, glad she’d left them in the truck after all. Her flat sandals would have been useless on the back of that great big horse. A horse who had scared her shitless for at least the first ten minutes, but at least it hadn’t shown. 

“My story?” Regina demands, sitting cross-legged on the blanket when Emma comes back from splashing her face and getting her hands clean. “I don’t give up, haven’t you noticed that?”

“Relentless indeed,” Emma agrees. “Okay, so. This probably isn’t a big deal to anyone who isn’t already obsessed with cameras, but here goes. You know I said my parents abandoned me? Well, the foster system… I don’t know. There were times where being left alone by a freeway seemed pretty appealing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I made it out. I didn’t do so great in school but there’s always that one teacher, right? Everyone has that one teacher. For me it was Mr Houseman, he taught History. He tried and he tried to get me interested in the Civil War, but I was way more interested in boys with cars and cigarettes. Until he showed me this book. The first photos that became what we call photojournalism today. You know, the whole thing I built my life around?”

“All from one book?” Regina is hanging on every dumb word, her chin resting on her hand as she drinks in the story. For the first time in a few too many dusty years, Emma thinks she might just be a story worth telling.

“I don’t know if you ever saw it… Gardner’s photo? The one of all the dead at Antietam? Kind of strange to think now that it was the first time anyone outside of conscripted soliders had ever really seen the true horror of war. Telling the stories that otherwise go untold? I swear to God, I practically felt the lightbulb going on over my head.”

“Like a cartoon character,” Regina is teasing now. “But it’s not that simple, is it? To go from looking at pictures in a book to shooting pictures of lions in Africa?”

Emma shrugs, leaning across Regina to swipe a sandwich from the little pile. They sit in comfortable silence for a moment, both cross-legged, eyes roving over each other in a quiet but desperate attempt to catalog every detail. If Emma keeps quiet much longer they’ll both hearing the ticking of their ever-diminishing time together. She has no choice but to just keep going.

“I wanted a camera pretty bad, but even skipping lunches and taking on odd jobs I never got together much. I managed to pick up a cheap Brownie second-hand, but people don’t just give things like that away. Not anywhere I’ve ever been.”

“Someone helped you? The teacher?”

“Nope.” Emma shakes her head, listening to the stream for a moment. “There was a guy. He was crazy about me. Or so he said. He started out boosting liquor stores, then jewelers. A real prince.”

“He sounds like one. He got you to help?”

“To distract.” Emma looks down at her knees. “That way I could tell myself it was nothing to do with me, but I guess we all know better now, huh? Then that one last job we did together, in Austin of all places… he grabbed the store owner’s Pentax for me. That camera, man. It could do things I hadn’t even dreamed about.”

“But it wasn’t yours to have.” Regina is stern, exactly as uncompromising as Emma expected. 

“Neither are you,” Emma whispers. “Here we are anyway.”

“You still have it?” Regina snaps, turning away to divide the snacks between them, before twisting with unnecessary strength at the corked bottle of wine. “Your prize?”

“No. It got me busted, a week later. Someone called the cops on us, only I was the only one there when they showed up. I never heard from Neal again. Still haven’t. Except...”

“Except…”

“When I went back to our old place in Austin, after I got out of jail. I, uh, he left me my truck. And inside, along with the keys and a little bit of cash, was a Pentax pretty close to the one that had made for prosecution evidence. I didn’t know whether to thank him or kill him. All I know is I’ve never had the chance so far.”

“And you’re worried I’ll think less of you now? For serving time?” Regina is kneeling now, leaning in towards Emma. “You think a boring housewife like me couldn’t love the wandering felon?”

“You shouldn’t say that word if you--”

“I know that word. I know it inside out and back again, and I’ve been willing to die for it in my time, Emma. Can you say the same?”

Emma shakes her head.

“Then don’t tell me not to say it. It’s ridiculous, crazy? Yes. But if I hold it in one minute longer I think that maybe I’ll burst. Wouldn’t that ruin a perfectly nice picnic?”

“Depends on how good your leftovers are,” Emma sighs, lifting the tension and accepting Regina’s grateful kiss. She tastes like mint and the hint of fresh tomatoes, and suddenly Emma isn’t sure which appetite is truly in charge. “Okay, I could go for some lunch,” she concedes when Regina finally relinquishes her. “But I’m starting by licking some of that honey from anywhere on your body that I want. Deal?”

“Deal.” Regina is already unbuttoning her yellow dress. Emma swallows hard and tries once more to believe her incredible good fortune.

***

“Wait,” Emma pants, exhausted from the brief jog so soon after their enthusiastic and completely indiscreet al fresco encounter. “What’s so urgent?”

“It’s not much further, come on.”

“I’m really not wild about people taking my camera, you know.” Emma gets her second wind at last, catching up to Regina who’s practically skipping her nimble way along the path. “Although I admit it looks good hanging around your neck like that.”

Regina simply laughs, leading Emma past another thicket of trees, the branches whipping at each of them as they push through. 

“You gave up on the bridge you planned today, to be with me,” Regina explains, hesitating when they next come to a small clearing. “I wanted to make that up to you. I don’t want your editor to be mad that some terrible Iowa housewife distracted you.”

“You’re not so terrible,” Emma says, “unless you’re about to push me off some cliff.” She sidles up behind Regina, wrapping her arms around Regina’s waist from behind and stealing a kiss from the side of her neck.

“It’s I-ow-a,” Regina overdoing it on the twang as she raises one hand to stroke Emma’s cheek. “Highest thing I could push you off is the horse. Now come on, we’re nearly there.”

As they step out onto the bank of the stream once more, somewhere further along its twists and turns, Emma is stunned at the sight of yet another covered bridge. She scans the topography committed to memory, but this isn’t anywhere that any of the bridges should be.

“Insider information,” Regina announces proudly. “You won’t find this on any map. It’s the only covered bridge that isn’t part of a real road, it just crosses the water. As you can see, it hasn’t been in use for quite some time.”

Emma stares at the decaying majesty of it, the wood warped and faded but still standing, a plethora of weeds and vines bursting through every possible crevice. _Life finds a way_ , she remembers, and she’s reaching for the camera unconsciously just as Regina starts handing it over to her.

“Have fun,” Regina says, with genuine happiness. She seems thrilled to have given this unexpected gift. “Take as long as you need.”

“No, wait!” Emma calls as Regina moves away to find a spot to sit. “I want you in the shot. At least some of them, just for me.”

“You mean you won’t put me in National Geographic and make me a star?” Regina scolds, hands on hips. “Maybe you should speak to my agent, Miss Swan.”

“Come on, Miss Model,” Emma groans. “Strike a pose, won’t you? The light won’t be this good all day.”

Regina hops self-consciously across the trickling water and stands where the bridge crosses a wider fork in the stream. She squints up at the sun for a moment, and just when Emma is getting ready to direct, Regina leans against the bridge in as natural a pose as anyone could hope for.

“Say cheese,” Emma calls as she runs off the first few snaps. She gets closer with every shot, stepping carefully to avoid another tumble in anything like mud. All too soon, she’s taking Regina’s cautious smile in close-up portrait, hands shaking enough to require a switch to auto-focus to spare embarrassment in the developing room. 

“You’re very close,” Regina says a moment later, reaching for Emma’s borrowed shirt and pulling her the rest of the way. “I’ll take my modeling fee in kisses, I think.”

“Well then,” Emma exhales, their mouths just inches apart. “I think I’d better get a jump on that payment.”


	12. Chapter 12

“One more,” Emma pleads, camera raised as a question. “Pretty please?”

“You ran out of film at least ten shots ago.”

“This is for my internal collection,” Emma teases, snapping away merrily although the film has in fact rewound. “I’m calling my boss and demanding a Regina cover spread, based mostly on the contents of my head right now.”

“Printing could get tricky,” Regina points out, letting go of the fence post she’s leaning on and advancing on Emma. The stalking grace of her steps would make any gazelle flee, but Emma stays rooted to the spot, transfixed. Regina has broken into a jog by the time she launches herself towards Emma, and if the catch isn’t entirely graceful, at least it has their bodies pressed against each other in a very pleasant way. “We should head back, soon.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty great but riding a horse at night sounds like more trouble than I’m ready for,” Emma agrees. “And I really do need to go get some of my things from Granny’s.”

“I’ll come with you,” Regina decides, pressing a hand over Emma’s mouth to stave off any protest. “One, no one will see me. Two, even if they do, who is going to think anything of two women sharing a glass of wine? I bet it happens all over America, every night.”

Emma shrugs. She kisses Regina’s palm to win back her freedom of speech. “Hey, it’s your town and you know it best. I’m trying not to wreck your life here, that’s all.”

“That’s for me to decide. What wrecks, what doesn’t. And maybe you have to wreck one thing to get something else.”

“You’re starting to sound like someone with an exit strategy.”

“I’m beginning to think… hell, I think I might need one. Don’t you? If I’m scaring you off by--”

Emma silences her with an enthusiastic kiss, in the course of which Regina unwraps her legs and slides right back to standing, all without breaking their lips apart. 

“You’re not so scary,” Emma whispers when they finally part, resting her forehead on Regina’s again. “Maybe I’m an idiot, but it doesn’t scare me.”

“You got some good shots?”

“Of your secret bridge? Yeah. And you, to boot. I’m going to develop so many copies I can wallpaper my apartment with them.”

“That sounds a little creepy.”

“Maybe I’m a little creepy,” Emma retorts, attempting to lead their way back to their original clearing and the horses. “Uh, I was never much for scouting…”

“See that tall tree, there? No leaves all down one side?” Regina points, her voice as patient as a kindergarten teacher. “We’re heading for that.”

Emma accepts the advice, sees the path in front of them clearly in an instant. She shakes her head at the silent click of something that felt just a little bit like what she imagines a home might be like. Striding forward, she settles again at the thrill of Regina taking her hand in hers. 

***

Maybe it’s the lateness of the hour, what with the sun already struggling down towards the horizon, or perhaps they’re a little drunk on kisses and more exchanged every few steps, slowing their progress by a ridiculous amount. Whatever the reason, Regina scans the fields for Florenz and Rocinante, locating them both without noticing the young girl standing between them on first sweep. It’s only a few minutes later, after another slightly breathless kiss that encourages Emma’s wandering hands back under the crumpled cotton of Regina’s dress, that she realizes what was wrong about the stillness of the scene.

“Mrs Mills?” A voice calls out, and it’s then that Regina sees the long dark hair and skinny pale legs of a girl beside Rocinante, tentatively holding his reins. “I saw your horses all alone and came to look for you…”

“Miss…”

“Blanchard,” she supplies helpfully, with a weak smile. Immediately after she goes back to staring first at Emma then at Regina, a horrified spectator at an invisible tennis match.

“Of course, Mary Margaret,” Regina is edging further from Emma with every second that passes, as though that can somehow undo what they’ve been caught doing. “It’s been a while since you came around for lessons.”

“My daddy needed the money for better things, he said. But he bought me my own horse now.”

“You’re a very lucky girl,” Regina assures her, taking Rocinante’s reins and patting his neck with affection. Perhaps the big old boy had obscured them from view after all. Another tiny miracle in a week that seems to be full of them. “But it’s getting late. Can you find your way home?”

“Are you a boy?” Mary Margaret demands of Emma, who looks every bit as shell-shocked as Regina feels. Emma tucks her borrowed shirt into her pants, playing for time and not very successfully. “You don’t look like a boy,” Mary Margaret presses.

“No,” Emma admits. “I’m a girl. A woman. Uh…”

“Then why were you kissing? That was kissing like in a movie. One of you should be the boy.”

“Mary Margaret, that is not appropriate.” Regina snaps, but she can feel her stomach somersaulting in the most horrible way. If she moves, hell, if she blinks, she might vomit that picnic lunch all over the grass in front of her. “And I don’t know what you think you saw--”

“Kissing.” Mary Margaret folds her arms over her chest, huffing at the very idea she might be wrong. It takes all of Regina’s willpower not to visibly roll her eyes. “I thought when you got married you could only kiss your husband, anyway. You’re a married lady, ain’t you Mrs Mills?”

“Mary Margaret,” Emma interrupts, walking over to the little girl and crouching down in front of her. “Do you know what a secret is?”

“Sure. It’s when you know a story but you can’t tell anybody. Or you’ll die.”

“Right. Well....”

“And,” Regina chimes in. “You’re a big girl now, so you must know what love is?”

“Love?” Mary Margaret is clever enough to look skeptical. Regina doesn’t dare meet her lover’s eye in that moment, this slim hope of escape is too fragile to be tested. “Like, true love? But you’re both ladies.” Her voice is a whine now, frustrated at the lack of sense in her young world.

“Two ladies can love each other, just as much as a prince and princess in a fairytale,” Regina continues, pouring all the sincerity she has into the words. She’s almost as shocked as anyone that her head should be turned this way, and so comprehensively, too. “And sweetheart, you may not understand, but I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone what you saw today. It would make a lot of people cry, and you don’t want that, do you?”

“I guess not.”

“You want to pinky swear?” Emma asks Mary Margaret, who seems almost as captivated with her as Regina has been these past few days. “That’s what makes a promise official.”

“Okay.” Mary Margaret hooks her pinky around Emma’s. “Maybe I can bring my horse over to visit yours sometime,” she suggests to Regina. “I think he gets pretty lonely when I’m in school.”

“Of course,” Regina lies, because already she’s formulating a plan of clothes thrown into the only suitcase she owns, of navigating roads by night in Emma’s truck and hoping they stay in range of a decent blues station the whole way. It’s reckless, and it tastes like sharp metal on her tongue, but Regina finds she wants that more than just about anything right now. “Now, we have to get these boys back to the stable. You be safe, now. And remember?”

“No telling,” Mary Margaret says with a beaming smile. “I know.”

“Phew,” Emma gasps when the girl trots off down the bank of the stream. A moment later, blonde hair is fanned out behind her as she falls back on the grass. “That was a little close for comfort. You know the kid?”

“She had lessons for a while. I actually had to get Ro--we asked her father to stop bringing her around after a while. Seemed to think paying for an hour of riding gave him all sorts of liberties with me.”

“Oh really?” Emma’s rage is pure and instantaneous, a match flaring in quiet depths. “Although, I suppose I don’t have much room to talk there.”

“Listen, querida,” Regina risks the nickname, it’s dying to fall from her tongue and has been for hours now. The silent thrill of the feminine ‘a’ is everything she thought it might be to say out loud. “You’ve taken nothing, you understand? Anything that happened between us is given, by me. And willingly at that.”

“So bossy.”

“I’m told.”

“Okay,” Emma sighs, considering her own horse again. “Why don’t I piggyback on your horse and we can just lead this guy?”

“That’s not fair on the horses,” Regina reprimands, even though the idea of being captured between Emma’s strong thighs, of wandering hands beneath her dress… no. The horses have been tied up and deserve the run. Tonight they’ll have time, and beyond that… “Come on. Time to get back on the horse, Miss Swan.”

Emma grumbles, but she does as she’s told. If Regina lingers a moment to appreciate the view of those legs (of that ass) in tight jeans, well, that’s simply because she’s the experienced rider of the two. 

***

“Is it weird?” Emma asks, when they’re washing their hands at the kitchen sink. She could do with a shower, but there’ll be time enough later. This summer heat is making her feel like she’ll never be clean again until October. “Having me in your home like this?”

“Not so weird,” Regina answers, and it’s just a fraction too quick. “Besides, safer here on my own land than in town at Granny’s, wouldn’t you think? Here, my guests are my business.”

“That little girl…”

“No one takes much notice of the Whites,” Regina tries to shut down the worry although it’s clearly still present in her own eyes when they meet Emma’s. “I doubt she’ll see much of anyone with school out like this. Not before…”

“... the end of the week?” Emma finishes. “Yeah. That’s creeping up pretty fast, huh? And back out there in the wilderness...” The last thing she wants is to give Regina an out, but fool that she is, Emma can’t bear to become a mistake. If this decision is made on a whim, it still has to be one they can both live with. 

“I meant what I said,” Regina whispers, taking Emma’s still-wet hands in her own. “I just don’t know how to… I mean, if I stay to tell them, I don’t think I can. Does that make me a terrible coward?”

“No,” Emma is only half-lying in her response. “But I think it depends a lot on what they deserve. What you think your life here deserves. If you were unhappy enough to click with me almost right away, something can’t have been right, can it?”

“It’s more than that.” Regina is adamant, fierce in her conviction. It makes Emma want to cry, and she isn’t even sure why. “You’re not just an excuse, not just a first step. If you think that…”

“I don’t,” Emma kisses her gently on the cheek. “I recognize you, I think. For the first time in I don’t know how long, you made me come out from behind that damn camera and really look. What did I see? You. And honey, you have a wanderer’s soul. You wouldn’t be so far from home if you didn’t. And maybe somebody told you that this is it for you. Maybe you even believe that. But I can’t help feeling there’s a lot more out there for you. With me.”

“A few months in Boston…? And then?”

“Wherever you want. Close your eyes and stick a pin in the map. I’ll make it happen.”

“Promises. Those are some big promises.” Regina pulls away, uncertain. Emma wants to pull her close but the moment feels far too fragile.

“Listen, I’m not going anywhere today. Let me go back and sort my life out at Granny’s, okay? Clean clothes and fresh film make me a much more appealing prospect. You get some quiet time to think this over. As much as you need.”

“What if I say no? That I have to stay here, that my children aren’t quite grown and my husband has done nothing wrong?” Regina is on the far side of the kitchen table as she asks it, as though that simple wooden barrier between them can protect either of their hearts. 

“Then I’m the idiot who fell for a married woman,” Emma decides after a moment. “It’s not like you deceived me in any way, Regina.”

“I like the way you say my name,” Regina groans, her eyes closed. “You never presume to shorten it, to make it flat and square in your mouth like everyone here. It sounds like my real name, again.”

“Well, call me if you want me to come back tonight,” Emma knows she has to go while there’s a scrap of resolve left in her. “I’m cabin five at Granny’s, I think they come knocking.”

“I--”

“Take the time, okay? I’ll see you later.”

Emma turns and grabs her camera bag, marching straight over to the truck before she can change her mind. Whatever Regina decides, she has to be ready for it. That might just be easier said than done.


	13. Chapter 13

The shower in Emma’s cabin sputters and threatens to cut out every thirty seconds, but after a few minutes she gets used to it. By the time the water runs from lukewarm to outright freezing, she can stand that too. Only when she can’t stop her teeth from chattering does she reach for the round metal handle and shut the struggling spray off.

Her own towel is worn and almost threadbare in parts, but it’s kinder to her skin that the white sandpaper substitute Granny has provided for her guests. Traveling alone Emma sees a lot of careless touches like this, since these facilities usually only have to meet the standards of single men, they’re often lacking in even basic comfort. It’s hard not to compare it to the softness of things in Regina’s house, the touches of a home that isn’t made for Emma but found a way to welcome her anyway.

Truth be told, the chivalrous thing to do right now is pack up and get the hell out of Dodge before Regina comes to a decision one way or the other. It’s too close to that darkness Regina gets in her eyes, though, of decisions effectively made for her and being left to feel trapped. Emma remembers that all too well from being a ward of the state, and the last thing she wants to do is take anyone’s freedom from them, including her own.

And, okay, so maybe she isn’t sure she could leave right now even if she wanted to. It’s going to take Regina showing up (or not, so much worse if it’s not) and telling Emma that a mistake has been made, that she wants the decks scrubbed clean before that wholesome little family returns from the other side of the state. 

The sob takes Emma completely by surprise, a sudden bubble in her chest that she can’t seem to breathe around. Her eyes sting and she has to pound her chest with a closed fist to get the feeling to pass. 

This really, really was not supposed to happen. 

She pulls some clean clothes from her other bag, frowning at her diary when it falls out onto the comforter. The schedule is already shot to hell and she’ll have to hope for good light and the energy for a lot of work tomorrow, whatever Regina decides. Dressed finally in a black tanktop and her second-favorite pair of jeans, she sits on the bed and starts tackling the tangles in her dripping-wet hair.

It’s going to be an unbearable evening.

***

Regina tries everything short of flipping a coin. To the point where a shiny quarter is actually twiddled between her thumb and fingers, the only outward sign of her inner turmoil. The truth, if she blocks out the competing voices and echoes, is that she already knows on a gut level what she wants; she’s already said as much to Emma and none of it was a lie. 

Which is perfectly simple until she looks at a drawing on the refrigerator or a scratch in the hardwood floor made by Roland’s soccer cleats, and she’s right back to the stomach-churning cost of what she would be leaving behind. She knows from idle gossip that everyone from Kathryn to Granny has joked about getting up one morning and running away from every last responsibility, but the deal this whole time has been that no one truly means it.

Otherwise, it means that Regina and almost everyone she knows is living one of those lives of quiet desperation, staving off loneliness but never quite achieving happiness along the way. That, considered in the stillness of an otherwise empty house, is enough to bring fresh tears to her eyes. Whatever she left home for, whatever she accepted Robin’s hamfisted proposal for all those years ago, it was never supposed to be an ‘almost’. 

But when Emma touches her, Regina can smell the burning sugar on the breeze, taste the salt water on her own lips. Perhaps it’s no more than illusion, the silly fantasy of a woman who should be content with being past her prime, but nothing about this week has made Regina feel so weary and undesired. No, Emma is freedom in a battered pickup truck and the thrilling hush of a secret affair. One that won’t be secret for long if Mary Margaret starts telling tales…

If she thinks about it for even a second longer, she’ll go mad. Biting her bottom lip, Regina exhales slowly and closes her eyes. One step decides it. Forward: she goes all the way upstairs, packs that one remaining, tired suitcase, the one Robin didn’t take for him and the boys. Turn left and she goes back to her life, straightening up the living room and removing all traces of Emma’s presence in the house. It’s exactly as simple as that, which makes it the most difficult decision she’s ever made. 

Her chest tightens as she forgets to inhale again, the burning of the muscles there serving to focus her mind. Regina breathes in slowly, and takes her fateful step.

***

Unable to stand the solitude of the cabin any longer, Emma gives in to her rumbling stomach and pulls her hair up under a floppy cowboy hat, a shade too big and a few years too old to do much but give her a place to pin up her damp hair and hide it away. The call to Granny’s is going to come in at the counter anyway, if it comes, and the absence of liquor makes it safer than the room where Emma’s pack contains most of a bottle of bourbon. 

Even the exalted fries can barely hold her attention, but Emma gamely picks at them, occasionally dipping one in the chocolate malt she ordered on a whim. The place is less busy than at lunch, most folks probably home with their families. She tries in vain not to consider how that might look in Boston, her own sparse and dusty apartment becoming home to Regina and maybe even one or both of her kids at some point. 

Like a dream in the first moments after waking, though, thinking about it too hard only makes the image slip away. Emma groans quietly and returns to the pile of grease and salt on her plate, each fry lying heavily when it hits her unsettled stomach. 

The door rings but she steels herself not to look up; there’s no reason for Regina to come looking. It’s only when Granny makes a beeline for Emma at the counter that she dares to let her heart skip a beat.

“No trouble this time, y’hear?” Granny nods to where the idiot Jones has just entered, surveying the half-full diner like he owns the joint. Emma groans around her mouthful of potato. The last thing she’s in the mood for is a rejected advance-cum-argument with this sleaze. She nods at Granny in acknowledgment and hunches lower over her plate. Alas, Emma never has had much luck at staying unnoticed, and moments later there’s the unmistakable stink of stale booze, sweat and leather lurking right behind her.

“Was hopin’ to find you here,” he says, his voice little more than a mean whisper, an excuse to lean in close to Emma’s ear. “‘Course if you hadn’t been, I reckon I’d have found you out at the Mills’ farm, ain’t that right?”

“Mills?” Emma flounders for a moment, unsure how to play it. “Oh, you mean Regina? Well, sure. She’s been helping me find all the bridges I’m here to photograph. Sometimes it takes a local, y’know?”

“I’m sure it does,” Jones is practically purring now, and Emma has a very bad feeling about just how up in her business he is. “Speaking of locals, I hear you met young Miss Blanchard today. Lovely girl, she was telling me all about it when I finished working for her Pop.”

Emma narrowly avoids choking on her last morsel of fries. 

“Outside,” she growls. There’s no way this ends civilized, and she doesn’t want more witnesses than are strictly necessary. 

“I’m fine right here.”

“I said, outside.” Emma doesn’t ask nicely this time, just grabs herself a fistful of leather and yanks the greasy bastard out through the fire exit. She can’t trust that he won’t mouth off as they walk through tables towards the front door. The minute they hit the parking lot that lurks, unused, behind the diner, she turns on him. “What is it that you want to say, Jones?”

“Miss Blanchard was just bursting to tell someone about the most exciting thing she’d ever seen,” Jones begins, stroking his stubbly beard like it’s storytime corner with the town pervert. “She wondered, with me being a man of the world, if I had ever heard of such a thing as two ladies falling in love? Like a fairytale, she said. Only with a princess and a princess, no princes in sight.”

“Fascinating,” Emma deflects, folding her arms over her chest to stop herself from giving the game away and reacting too early. There’s nothing to say the kid actually blabbed. Jones might just be fishing around on a hunch. God knows she’s done it enough times to get the real story out of interview subjects.

“Now, as you might imagine I felt concern for the child. Anyone filling her head with that sort of filth might just be a danger to her, not to mention her reputation. An innocent child like could easily be taken advantage of by a bad sort.”

“You’d know,” Emma snorts. “You’re like the boogeyman the nuns in my school used to warn us was lurking right outside the gates, with candy and a car we should never get in.”

“Big words, there. Coming from the self-same deviant telling the girl such stories.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Then maybe it was your _lover_ ,” Jones suggests with a leer. “I can make some allowance for the girl getting mixed up on which stranger told her what, but she was pretty damn sure that it was her old riding teacher playing kiss-chase with some blonde lady. Same riding teacher as taught most of the kids in this town outside the farms, I’d wager. Only one person gonna come to mind if you give out that description.”

“Are you drunk?” 

“You wish I was drunk. Stone cold sober, and feeling chatty.”

Emma considers her options. The space is still deserted and no one has come out of the diner to butt in where they’re not wanted. If she’s going to silence this creep, opportunities won’t come much more golden than this. She’s been all but run out of town before, but she can’t bail and leave Regina to face gossip and accusations like this, whatever happens.

“Say for just a moment that any of this horseshit was close to being true,” Emma concedes the first inch, and can feel the quicksand beneath her boots almost instantly. “What makes you think anyone is going to give a damn?”

“Well, the one thing you didn’t reckon on is Mr. Mills, ain’t it?” Jones moves closer, and Emma steps back against the fire door, closing it and effectively locking them out on this side. “See, Robin’s a good friend of mine. When he went off to join the navy, he looked out for my brother. It’s only when they got sent to different ships that… well. Robin wouldn’t have let it happen, you see. He pressed for the full military funeral, all of that. I owe him a great debt.”

“Sounds like something between the two of you,” Emma ventures. “Can’t see what it has to do with his wife.”

“Well, she’s been here a while but she’s still an outsider. Our boy Robin, he’s born and raised in this here town, understand? When he took over the Mifflin farm, we all rallied to support him. Even when that wife of his wanted to waste his money on horses and whatnot.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your story all made up in your head,” Emma dismisses one more time. “It’ll say more about you than it does about anyone else. Maybe you’re the one jealous of his wife, hmm?”

She isn’t expecting him to react so quickly, but the chokehold is stunningly fast and his grip around her throat is vicious. Emma feels sick at the back of her throat from the impact of her skull against the door and it takes a long few seconds to gather her wits and kick out at him. Only when her boot connects with his shin bone does his grip loosen enough for her to break free.

“Don’t you ever…” Emma gasps, before coughing and spluttering onto the asphalt for a moment. “Lay a fucking finger on me again. Not unless you want your balls made into earrings.”

“You’ve got four hours to get out of town,” Jones announces, glancing at his watch. “If I see you around here after that, both you and your girlfriend will have an unfortunate accident of some kind. Unless, of course…”

“What?” Emma demands.

“Well, there’s one way to quash this kind of nasty rumor. And that’s when the whole town knows you’ve got a handsome fella taking care of your needs. Would save a terrible scandal for our friend Regina, all in one fell swoop.”

“You are not suggesting--”

Jones grabs his crotch with a leer. That’s exactly what he’s suggesting.

“Of course, just you is one thing. But a night with two attractive ladies? Well that would just blow a man’s mind, don’t you think? I might forget I ever had any news to tell.”

“Or,” Emma rationalizes, reeling him in. “You would be in just as deep. Couldn’t tell anyone without revealing your own conquest, right?”

“Right. Like insurance. You might never have met Robin, but I sure as hell don’t want to be on the business end of his shotgun.”

“Except…” Emma fakes thinking about it just a moment longer. “There’s no way a blackmailing prick like you ever gets his hands on a woman like Regina. Or me, for that matter. So no one is going to believe your bragging. Which we all know is pretty much the first thing you’d do, shotgun or not. I’ll take the four hours. You? Keep the hell out of my way until then.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Come near me or Regina before then?” Emma warns. “And it won’t be her husband’s shotgun you have to worry about taking your fool head off.”

She strides off across the parking lot, turning the corner and ducking into the diner just long enough to grab her purse and drop some cash on the counter for Granny. There’s packing to do, and not a minute to waste if she’s to get out to Mifflin Farm and warn Regina in time.

***

The engine groans as she forces it into the highest gear, but Regina never relents with her stabbing at the clutch and stomping on the gas pedal in turn. She hasn’t driven this frantically since the time Roland fell from the hayloft and split his forehead open, a day that she’s in no hurry to relive, even if the panic and sick feeling in her stomach is all too familiar.

Only this time, as she skids into the parking lot by Granny’s cabins, all it takes is the sight of a yellow truck to instantly soothe her pounding heart. 

Emma is here. 

The decision, such as it is, didn’t take too long after all. This should be a moment for Regina to realize that there are no such things as fairytales. That a wild fling one week in July doesn’t mean anything next to marriage and two beautiful children. That her happiness is set and has peaked so many years ago, and the only thing to look forward to is slowly growing old and having less and less living in the process.

Instead she sees a familiar figure, gorgeous and strokable hair tucked up in a worn cowboy hat, loading the truck in a hurry. Regina is grabbing at her door handle and dashing across the parking lot before she can think better of it.

“If you’re trying to outrun me, you failed.”

Emma looks up, startled. The smile that splits her face a second later is as genuine as it is breathtaking, and Regina feels the wave of doubt slowly rolling back. Emboldened, she reaches for Emma’s hand despite the relatively public location. Emma recoils as though the briefest of touches carried a thousand volts. 

“Not here,” she hisses, and the urgency is matched only by the wildness in her eyes. “Get back in the truck, okay? Meet me… meet me at the first bridge, okay?”

“The first?”

“The one you took me to the first day. We really can’t be seen together right now, okay? Trust me.”

Regina nods, her instinct is to argue the point but the pit of dread in her stomach that blossomed on seeing Mary Margaret Blanchard is churning once more. She scurries back to her own, faithful truck and guns the engine, relieved to see Emma pulling her own keys from the pocket of her tight jeans.

It’s almost like driving straight back home, but despite driving on autopilot along near-deserted roads, Regina remembers to take the turning, nodding in acknowledgment on seeing Archie Hopper’s big, spotty dog. It’s only a handful of minutes after she parks at the side of the road when Emma’s truck roars into view. Regina can’t help but notice that the duffel bag usually stored in back with the photo equipment is right up front in the passenger seat, bursting at the seams like it’s been packed in a hurry. It really doesn’t look like Emma’s giving her the evening to decide anymore.

“Hey,” Emma jumps down from the truck and loses her hat in the process. If she notices, she doesn’t seem to care. In the few yards between them, Emma doesn’t meet Regina’s eye during a single step, scanning the landscape like snipers might be aiming for them instead. Only when they’re inches apart does she relent, grabbing Regina’s upper arms and drawing her into a kiss that borders on frantic. It’s not the greed that they’ve been guilty of so far, the need for more and more that’s dominated every encounter. Instead it’s laced with something that scares Regina, and reluctant though she is to end the contact, she’s the one who pulls away.

“Spill, Emma. Whatever it is…”

“I had a run in with that guy Jones again. At the diner.”

“He hit on you again. But you’re… oh my God, did he force himself on you?”

“What? No! God, no!” Emma looks sick at the thought. “He isn’t above trying, but I can handle myself. The only kind of physical it got was the son of a bitch trying to choke me.”

“The sleazy bastard,” Regina seethes, pulling Emma into a hug fit to crack some ribs. “I’ll kill the _puto_ , you see if I don’t. Robin’s shotgun is right there in the hall, I’ll find Jones and blow his balls off.”

“Easy there, Annie Oakley,” Emma murmurs against Regina’s neck. “I told you, I handled it. But his beef isn’t just with me.”

“He knows?” Regina gasps, this time letting Emma pull back from her. 

“Apparently boy wonder has been working for that kid’s father this week. Seems little Mary Margaret loves to blab when someone gives her a bit of attention. He all but called us child molesters for letting her see what she did.”

“That’s… shit. Well, that’s how people are going to think around here. He’s maybe one of the worst, though.” Regina is pacing now, her flat shoes kicking up dust from the track as she turns. She runs her fingers through her hair, struggling for a reaction or a plan beyond blind panic. “He’s bizarrely fond of my husband, you know.”

“He explained as much. Navy buddies, something about the dead brother? I can’t say I heard much beyond that.” Emma has her hands in her pockets. “Listen, if you think you can find a way to shut him up - and I’m not averse to the whole shotgun idea, let’s not rule that out - and maintain the peace here, just tell me and I’ll get the hell out of Dodge.”

“You’d leave me to face this alone?”

“It’s so much worse if I’m here, don’t you get that? I’m trying to protect you.”

“By running away. Maybe I should have listened when you explained your little pattern.”

“So what, you were driving over to tell me you’re not leaving your husband? Because if that’s the case, I can get on the road a hell of a lot sooner. So maybe you should _spill_.”

“Why are we fighting?” Regina snaps. “I came to tell you I would go with you, it isn’t supposed to go like this.”

“You…” Emma is stunned, like a foal staggered by a sudden breeze, all wide-eyed and tremulous. “You’re really coming with me? Oh my God.”

“That’s what you wanted, right? It’s what I want, too.”

“I didn’t dare to… I mean, of course I want it!” Emma kisses her then, lips trembling when they first make contact and if there’s a taste of salt to their embrace, Regina can’t be sure which of them started crying first. “I don’t deserve you, I know that. But I’ll bust my ass trying Regina, I promise.”

“I’m not sure I deserve happiness like this,” Regina admits. “And already I miss my boys enough that it’s harder to breathe. I just know if I stay here, if I go on without you, it won’t ever be enough.”

“You deserve more than just enough,” Emma insists, so sincere that Regina’s breath catches in her throat. “I need to do a bit more work tomorrow, but let’s find somewhere to stay tonight. Somewhere no one knows you, and we can just be together. I’ll fix a plane ticket and everything in the morning.”

“I have some money, too. It’s not much, my father left me some and Robin insisted I keep Rocinante’s stud fees. It’s all in an account--”

“We’ll worry about that when we need to. Right now, anything you need I got it covered. I swear.” Emma has that determined set to her jaw that Regina is already so helplessly in love with. “I guess this is what they mean about the reality after the fantasy, huh? Travel arrangements and talk about money?”

“It’s part of every relationship, I think. If it’s boring after all that freedom, I understand…” Regina can’t help but offer another out. That this wild adventurer, this glamorous photographer from the big city, would throw away her bohemian life to settle down with a housewife she picked up in Iowa still seems like too much to hope for. 

“Nothing about you is boring. Never could be,” Emma assures her. “What did you want to do about your, uh, family?”

“If I see them again, I think maybe I won’t leave,” Regina admits, squinting a little as she turns into the sun. “If that makes me a coward, then so be it. I know my own limitations.”

“Well, if we have to stay sort of close one more day, maybe you could write them something? I can drop the letter by the house when I’m done with the bridges. Then you can call your boys from Boston?”

“That sounds okay. I can do that.”

“God, Regina. Are we really doing this? I mean, what about your truck?”

“Leave it here. Someone will see it and tell Robin. They’ll… Henry can have it. He needs a car soon, anyway.”

Emma looks around one more time, shoving her hands back in her pockets, the picture of awkwardness. 

“In that case, I guess I’ve gotta ask you to ride with me?”

“Yes,” Regina answers, and they both know she’s saying it to so much more than a claim on the passenger seat.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the road out of town isn't the road you're supposed to take.

They ride in silence for the first ten minutes or so, nervous glances exchanged like teenagers on a first date, where the movie hasn’t started and the popcorn is already bought. Eventually, somewhere around the town limits, Regina reaches across and places her hand on Emma’s where it rests a little tighter than usual on the gearstick. 

“Okay?” Emma asks, and if the word sticks in her throat it’s just that good old Iowa dust to blame, she swears.

Regina nods, and something about heading towards Des Moines relaxes the set of her shoulders. Emma finds herself breathing a little easier at the sight. 

“Music,” she says after a moment, turning the dial until static fills the cabin. Instead of seeking out the blues’ station, Emma settles on some jangling rock that obliterates any silence and makes the road seem to roll by a little faster beneath her tires.

“So,” Emma interrupts when Storybrooke is no longer even a blur in the rearview mirror. “Where should we be heading?”

“Somewhere… not the city? Just quiet, somewhere we can be just the two of us for the rest of the night?”

“That I can do,” Emma agrees, stepping harder on the gas. “Trust me?”

Regina nods.

***

“Saw this on the way down,” Emma explains before jumping out of the truck and coming around to open Regina’s door for her. “Don’t imagine the rooms are up to much, but the guy at the gas station says it’s clean.”

“What’s that over there?” Regina asks, stepping out of the truck but finding her feet don’t want to cross the small, dirt parking lot. It’s only at Emma’s touch that she feels able to move again. “Those men…” 

She nods towards the musicians unpacking their instrument cases from the back of a dusty pickup, laborer’s overalls tied around their waists, but crisp white shirts and unfastened bow ties on top. 

“The barn over there is a bar,” Emma explains. “Well, kind of a club, really. I’m guessing they’re part of the band.”

“I didn’t know places like this existed. At best we go out in the next town over, or Des Moines if we can get an overnight sitter.”

“Things are going to be a little different. Especially in Boston.”

“I know. I think maybe it’s time for different.” Regina clenches her fist in conviction, surprised that Emma doesn’t take her arm as she moves towards the front door of the boarding house, cases in one hand and her duffel bag slung over one shoulder. Not content to stand back yet again and play the dutiful, practically mute wife, Regina overtakes her and rings the bell on the ramshackle front desk with considerably more confidence than she feels.

An ancient man comes out from in back, his plaid shirt wide open and as faded as the gingham curtains that hang listlessly in the windows. His once-white tanktop underneath bears the remnants of at least one bowl of chili and countless splashes of coffee, but Regina notices that his hair is neatly-combed and there’s barely a hint of dirt beneath his fingernails.

“We’d like a room,” she announces, rummaging in her purse for her pocketbook.

“Jus’ one?” The man asks, already picking a key from the rack and looking none too interested in the answer. 

“Yes,” Regina takes a deep, deep breath that reaches all the way to her knees. “Double, sir. No need for a twin.”

That gives him cause to lift a bushy eyebrow, but Regina keeps her gaze steady, ready to stare him down. 

“All twins,” he says, nodding to the staircase. “But y’all go ahead and push the beds together if it matters that much.”

“Thanks,” Emma interrupts, snatching the room key from where he’s laid it on the counter. “What’s one night gonna cost us?”

“Thirty flat.”

“Sold,” she says, slapping the bills down in return. “When does the bar start serving?”

“Already open. Food’s goin’ fast though.”

“C’mon,” Emma guides Regina by the elbow towards the stairs. “What’re you trying to do? Get us wrapped up in a hate crime? I thought your boy Jones was trouble enough for one day.”

“If we’re going to do this,” Regina decides, giving voice to a thought that’s been pestering her the whole way out of Storybrooke County. “Then we’re going to call it what it is, and be proud of it. I won’t hide, I won’t bow to these people with their small minds and quick fists.”

“Well,” Emma exhales the word as they stop outside room 3. She opens it to reveal the two twin beds, a washstand and a chair that’s seen better days. The linens are worn, Regina notes, but they smell clean and there’s barely a hint of dust in the room. Without waiting for Emma’s permission or for her to close the door, Regina selects the right-hand bed and pushes it flush with its mate, leaving space on either side for them to get in or out. 

“Well what?” Regina presses, crossing back over the room with its now-closed door to the basin, where she splashes cool water over her hands.

“I get what you’re saying,” Emma continues. “Believe me, I want to live that way too. But you have to know there are times when it’s about self-preservation. The world isn’t the way we want, just because we want it.”

“Agreed,” Regina concedes, running the water over her face and down her neck. She’s going to change anyway, so who cares if her dress gets a little wet? “I just… wanted to try it, I suppose? Besides, the world is out there, not in here.”

“And this door locks,” Emma confirms, doing exactly that. “We’d better get you out of that damp clothing before you catch cold, Regina.”

“Miss Swan, you’ve read my mind.” Regina opens one button, and then a second, and suddenly neither one of them can think of anything else they need to talk about.

***

Emma’s reservations dissolve at the touch of Regina’s fingers. Their encounters haven’t been particularly tentative so far, but here in new surroundings Regina’s touch is deft and confident. Maybe it’s the lack of shadows, fewer memories lurking in the corners.

For her part, it’s the first time Emma can allow herself to forget that this woman, this gorgeous and spellbinding woman in front of her, ever belonged to anyone else.

No. Emma shakes her head to clear the thought. Regina doesn’t belong to anyone but herself, especially now. Commitment is another foreign land to explore and maybe find a home in at long last, but Emma thinks the secret might be in trying to walk alongside someone instead of trying to pull them back towards you. Maybe that’s naive, but as Regina’s determined tongue lashes across Emma’s right nipple, it’s hard to think of something Emma wouldn’t do to be with her.

Especially when just the graze of Emma’s fingers over her hipbone can make Regina whimper like that.

***

A few more trucks and cars have pulled into the lot when they get downstairs, redressed and flushed in the cheeks. Regina doesn’t look for Emma’s hand this time, but is pleasantly surprised when it’s offered anyway.

The barn is an impressive space, the ceiling lowered and covered with sparkling lights that don’t illuminate too much while the sun starts to set behind them. No more than fifteen tables fill the space, with a clear area for dancing, right in front of a band that Regina can’t help but be impressed by. This is no lothario guitarist with a drunken grandma on piano like she’s used to. 

A table for two isn’t hard to secure, even as more car doors slam outside and couples trickle in. Regina watches them, not the roster of middle-aged white folks that seem to form the entire population of Storybrooke. Instead these couples are a mix of races, or a match in gender, avoiding eye contact with anyone but each other. 

The menu, such as it is, is really just diner fare with fewer options. Emma selects the chicken and waffles with a tight smile to their disinterested server, and the band move from tuning up into some soft jazz that transforms the place in just a few bars. The lights lower and the sky finishes its job of darkening through the open barn door. Trumpets and sax combine, following the lead of a weathered but perfectly tuned piano. Regina feels herself relax for the first time all day, and she orders the same again, beers on the side for both of them.

By the time the food is served and dispatched to no longer rumbling stomachs, Emma is on her third beer and emboldened enough to ask Regina up to dance. The floor hasn’t exactly been hopping so far, but at the sight of more people joining the fray, the band picks up the tempo with their next song.

The movement, and the laughter that spills from them both in the process, is a tonic. Regina feels the panic of earlier fade away. She hasn’t lost Emma. Things might be changing in unimaginable ways, but she’s gained something so wonderful that Regina scarcely dares to think about it too carefully, just in case someone can still snatch it away.

It’s a slow dance when Regina can’t keep the barriers up any longer. Unbidden, she thinks of her boys on their last night at the state fair, squabbling over corndogs and cotton candy, steered through the crowds by Robin’s strong hands at their shoulders, running off but always coming back a moment later. 

“Excuse me,” she mutters against Emma’s shoulder, winding through the other dancers and darting towards the big door that offers space and the cool night air. It isn’t long before Emma emerges, cheeks flushed from the beer and the dancing, a question in her gaze.

“It’s okay to change your mind,” Emma offers when Regina doesn’t say anything. “I mean, it’s not. But I said I would understand.”

“You can’t be that understanding. If you said to me now that you’ve rescinded the offer, well…”

“Well, what?”

“I think my heart would break. Literally, it would crack into tiny little pieces, maybe even all the way down to dust. I can’t even think about it.”

“I think that’s supposed to be a good sign. But there’s something…”

“What?” Regina moves into the shadows as another couple come spilling out. Even here, she wants some privacy to be humiliated. 

“It’s not a choice between your husband and me, is it? It’s your boys, too.”

“Yes.” Regina clenches her fists, banging one against the barn wall behind her. “I don’t know how to explain it. I know they’re almost grown, I know that. It’s just what if this last part is the most important? What if I mess them up forever by just running away?”

“I told you I was in foster care, right?” Emma crouches, picking up a stick and drawing aimless lines in the dirt that cross over each other at random. She doesn’t make eye contact as she speaks. “It wasn’t always this game of pass-the-parcel. Sometimes, there were families who wanted me to stay. Or women who thought they could manage raising one girl on their own.”

“But it didn’t work out?”

“Someone else always came along. A new boyfriend, a baby of their own after they thought they couldn’t… like there was one space left on the lifeboat, and just when I thought it was mine, I got bumped down the list. So what I’m saying is, I’m the last person who should be taking a mother away from her kids. I know how it feels to suddenly go from top of the list to second place. Or worse.”

“Oh, Emma.” Regina crouches then too, reaching out to caress Emma’s cheek. “You didn’t deserve that. Not for a second. I worry if you choose me, you’re choosing someone who can’t always guarantee that top spot. Being a mother is…”

“I know. I’ve heard about it everywhere from Tucson to Timbuktu. Women all over the world make these sacrifices, over and over again. I guess I hoped I’d caught you late enough for it still to be possible. And it was stupid of me to think it would be resolved in one conversation.”

“I want it to be.” Regina kisses her, as full of sincerity as she can communicate with lips alone. “I don’t know what to do.” She says, pressing their foreheads together. “Every time I think I’ve decided, one of us says something and it’s chaos all over again.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy.” Emma kisses her this time, sweetly and without lingering. It feels far too much like the start of a goodbye. “I think we both know one thing about tonight, though.”

“I’m going back?” Regina closes her eyes as she makes the admission. 

“You should be there, in the morning. Leaving a note means your man will come looking for you. If you can look them all in the eye any time between now and Monday, then you call me and I’ll come get you. Otherwise, I’m flying out of Chicago at one o’clock Monday afternoon. Don’t plan on being back in Iowa after that.”

Emma stands then, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. If biting down on her lower lip is supposed to prevent her from crying, it’s having little effect on the tears streaming down her cheeks. The flow of saline is matched only by that on Regina’s own face.

“Don’t leave me behind. My whole life I’ve never really chosen anything. I’ve just followed whatever someone told me was my destiny. My mother, Robin, all of them. I tried so hard to be good, to get the happy ending I deserved.”

“I know you did. But I’m not going to be someone else who sets the course for you. Choose me, Regina. Without pressure or influence or anything at all in mind but the fact that I am crazy in love with you after a few days. And I reckon I will be for the rest of my life, because this sort of crap can’t happen more than once in a lifetime. It just can’t.”

“Eloquent. I like the bit where you call it crap.”

“I’m a regular poet.” Emma risks looking at her again. “If you get the bags, I’ll go settle the check?”

“I’m not saying anything’s over,” Regina reminds her, taking Emma’s hand and squeezing it. “But you’re right. I have to face them.”

“Okay.” Emma turns, disappearing into the dancing shadows of the barn. Regina lingers a moment longer, debating, before trudging across the ground to fetch their cases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, I have been the worst at updating. I got totally stuck and in a bad place with the story about how Regina is going to deal with her kids, because she is a Mama Bear first and foremost and I could never betray that. Now I've worked through that it's safe to post the remaining few chapters, in which I hope you'll come to understand the choices made by each character and what's actually best for everyone. Or you know, not.
> 
> Anyway, there should be more tomorrow and I'm aiming to mark this COMPLETE in the next few days.


	15. Chapter 15

They pull up at the farm. Emma kills the engine, but she doesn’t get out. This might be her last chance, and she doesn’t want to move an inch further away from Regina than she has to.

“I’ll be at the Holiday Inn by O’Hare. Don’t call me unless it’s to say come get me. If it goes the other way, well, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier not to hear your voice again.”

“You’re not coming in?” Regina has that flash of desperation in her eyes, the glint alone enough to make Emma’s willpower waver. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. People in town need to see that I’m really gone. It makes Jones look like he’s making up tales about the girl who kicked his ass, if he spreads any rumors while he’s all bruised.”

“Chicago is a four-hour drive. I thought we’d at least have the rest of tonight…”

“You don’t know your family won’t come home early. And in case this is it,” Emma reaches into the pocket of her shirt. “I found this when I was throwing my things together. I want you to have it.”

She hands over a single photograph, no more than six inches by four, and waits for Regina’s reaction.

“Oh!” Regina clutches her chest as she looks at the image before her. Even in poor light, Emma figures it must be recognizable. “This gate… it’s _El Fortín_.”

“I don’t have a copy of the magazine with the whole shoot, but I kept this one in my… I have this lockbox I keep some of my favorites in. I mean, they’re not that great, not even my best, but there’s something about them, you know?”

“My father used to… thank you. Emma, I can’t tell you how much this means.”

Emma waves her hand in acknowledgment, not trusting herself to speak in that moment. She might suggest an impromptu vacation in Vieques, and then they’re screwed all over again.

“I don’t know how to make myself get out of this truck.” Regina confesses a moment later, the photo pressed over her heart through her dress, but her eyes are dark and firmly focused on Emma now.

“Well, you reach for the handle and--”

Regina’s interrupting kiss is so gentle at first; it’s barely a brushing of lips that makes Emma’s joking instruction die in her throat. Emma tangles her fingers in Regina’s hair, thumbs caressing her temples as they trade quick, shallow kisses that seem to steal the breath from their lungs. 

“I will--” Regina doesn’t know what she’s saying, but Emma shushes her.

“Broken promises are worse. Don’t do that. Not to me, not to yourself. But you have to go in now, or I really won’t be able to do the right thing here.”

“The right thing doesn’t feel like that at all.”

Emma pulls away, and shrugs. She guns the engine for effect, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her shirt and looking out towards the road. Regina, reluctant and opening her mouth to speak again, finally relents and the door creaks open. Emma idly notes she should get a touch of oil on those hinges. It’s hard to come up with another task she could care about less.

“Regina?” Emma has thought of one last thing she needs to say. “If you stay, if you feel you have to? Don’t be mad at them. There’s nothing worse than a parent who resents you, okay?”

Regina nods, her eyes brimming again. She slams the truck door closed and goes to pull her case out of the back. Emma’s left hand releases its death grip on the wheel, and against her best judgment it wraps around the dull chrome of the door handle. The slightest squeeze of her fingers would release it, would send her spilling out into the inky night illuminated only by the dull yellow of Regina’s porch lights, and Emma’s headlights pointing back towards the road. She can feel the cool metal warming beneath her hand, the clamminess of her skin sitting on its surface with every second that she doesn’t make a move.

Her hand is still frozen there as Regina makes her way around the front of the truck. If she looks up in the glare of the headlights, Emma knows her body will make the decision for her and she’ll have her feet on the ground before she can stop it from happening. 

Regina doesn’t look up. 

She doesn’t look back, either, not before she’s swallowed up by the leaning shadows of the porch. If she’s looking back now, Emma can’t see her and that’s reason enough to finally go.

Emma tries to whisper ‘goodbye’ as she trundles along in first towards the end of the farm’s long driveway. All that comes out is a half-swallowed sob.

***

The thundering of footsteps on the stairs awakens her, barely a moment before Roland comes crashing into the bedroom. He’s carrying a gorgeously green watermelon that’s almost as big as he is, depositing it on the rumpled sheets with an ‘oof’ of relief.

“Momma!” He yelps, offering her the newly-vacated space between his arms. Regina sits up to accept the hug, still dazed, before pulling him back onto the bed with her. He’s too old for this kind of playfulness, really, but something about a few days without home cooking and a mother’s validation always makes her boys more pliable. Roland scoots away from her when Henry appears in the doorway, not racing after his brother for once.

“You slept in your clothes?” Henry asks, nodding at her dress. “Jeez, Mom. Can’t you function without us around to bug you?”

“I function perfectly well,” Regina reprimands, her voice hoarse. “Roland, what is this green monster you threw at me?”

“I won it!” Roland says proudly, blowing a loose curl out of his eyes. He’s overdue for a haircut, and Henry is too, no matter how much he insists he’s growing it out. “Henry gave me the raffle money from his winnings.”

“You won?” Regina clasps her hands in delight, and Henry produces a blue-and-white rosette from behind his back. “Oh, Enrique. I knew you could do it!”

For a moment, this is the whole world. It’s her home, it’s her life and she hasn’t given up anything, not one tiny part of herself. These beautiful boys she loves completely, with every single atom of her being. This is no compromise, no second place. Her boys are a rosette, a victory every hour of every day. 

It’s almost enough to drown out the dull, thudding ache in her chest.

“Where’s Pop?” She asks, not in any particular rush to see her husband. She fears the week’s secrets are branded all over her skin, lines and swirls of terrible confessions no man should ever have to read. 

“He dropped us off then went by Granny’s. He had some stuff for her, said it was best to get the errands done first.” Roland answers without wondering why she would ask, already hefting his giant fruit for its journey downstairs. “He said you can freeze the watermelon too, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Regina agrees. “You boys go help yourselves to cereal. I’m going to wash up and then I’ll make you some breakfast.”

“It’s past lunch,” Henry points out. “But food is good, whatever you want to call it.”

Roland watches her a moment as she eases her way out of bed.

“Your eyes look kind of puffy, Momma. Did you get a bug bite?”

“No, it just happens when you’re a grown-up,” Regina lies. “Now scoot, you two. Before I forget why I’m glad to see you.”

They make their way back downstairs, leaving Regina to search frantically through the sheets for her keepsake. Under her pillow she finds the photograph, just one tiny crease in the bottom right corner. She’ll have to be more careful, she vows there and then.

Slipping it in the drawer of her nightstand, she makes her way to the bathroom. Stripping off last night’s dress, she tells herself it doesn’t smell like Emma’s light perfume. It’s punitive, something the nuns would approve of, but when Regina runs the shower she runs it hard and cold. Maybe if she scrubs hard enough, she’ll keep her secrets long enough to make a final decision.

***

The hotel is really a glorified motel, but the bed has a real mattress and there’s a brand new Gideon’s Bible in the nightstand. Emma checks in under her own name and pays cash instead of using the travelers’ checks the magazine provides. Whatever happens, whatever state she leaves Chicago in, it feels wrong to do it on someone else’s dime. 

At least she has her own bathroom, one she quickly adapts into a dark room with the kit she keeps in a stainless steel case. Switching the flickering bulb out for a dull red is a moment’s work, and the shower rail makes it easy to pin treated prints up to dry. If housekeeping ignore the Do Not Disturb sign, Emma will cross that particular bridge when she comes to it.

She loses herself for a few hours in developing the first rolls of the bridges, the test shots and lighting experiments that gradually coalesce into her bankable shots. With unexpected foresight, she had marked the rolls with Regina’s impromptu modeling session separately and so they languish in the chilled minibar, undeveloped and unable to distract.

There’s only so slowly she can work, and only so loudly she can play the radio until someone thumps on the wall. Emma paces a lot, counts the planes coming and going in an idle sort of way, popping peanuts from a can as she sits by the window with her feet up on the desk. 

The airport itself proves her best distraction, taking her most basic kit with her and busying herself with random images of arrival and departure, walking away from reunited families or jubilant couples when the happiness becomes too much to bear. She eats substandard hamburgers and longs for Granny’s addictive fries.

It’s pathetic, really, to check for messages. The clerk takes his time, as if he really expects there to be a little pink slip for her. When he shakes his head at last, Emma tries to fake a smile of relief.

“Seems I’m getting some peace and quiet after all,” she tells him, and they can both see through it as clear as day.

It’s three floors up, so Emma walks instead of waiting for an elevator. She wanders past rooms, occupied or not they all look the same from the outside. When she reaches her own, halfway down a long corridor, she hesitates before using the key. What if Regina hasn’t called because she’s decided just to show up? What if she bribed that pleasant, deliberate clerk into letting her wait on one of the twin beds in nothing but a tiny white towel?

Emma knows before the door swings open that her fantasy won’t come true. But damn, for a minute, it almost felt real again.

***

“What’s this?” Robin asks as they’re getting ready for bed. Regina stripped the bed and remade it before dinner, just in case, so she’s surprised to see him standing on her side of it when she comes into the bedroom.

“I don’t know what you’re holding,” she hedges, easing the door closed behind her. Whatever happens now, the children shouldn’t hear. “What are you rifling through my drawers for, anyway?”

“I’m not rifling. I was looking for that ointment you got, for my hands?”

“I have some hand cream?” Regina offers, and predictably Robin scoffs. 

“My hands are stiff, that’s all. Not in need of a flowery scent.”

“So what did you find?” Prompting, Regina moves closer. 

“This photo. I don’t recognize it.” Robin hands it over, leaving a fingerprint or two on the surface. He’s never been careful with these things, no matter how much she scolds to only hold the edges. 

“Really?”

“Why, should I?”

“It’s where you took me on some of our first dates. To avoid my mother. We’d walk around the place, climb over the broken walls?” Regina notices her hand is trembling as she holds the photo, incredulous that a place they visited many times in their courtship isn’t even vaguely familiar to her husband.

“If you say so,” Robin says, placating smile plastered across his face. “I could really do with that ointment, Gina.”

“It’s in the bathroom cabinet,” Regina sighs. “You turn in, dear. I think I might go read awhile downstairs. Wait for Henry to get back from Grace’s.”

“You can’t read in bed?” Robin looks to the abandoned paperback on her nightstand. “Well, whatever you want. I guess you got used to having the nights to yourself this week, huh?”

“Right.” Regina swallows, hard. It takes a lot of self-control to walk back downstairs and not run.

***

Sunday dawns and Roland heads off to church with his father. Henry hasn’t stirred from his bed by the time they leave, so Regina changes into some jeans and a checked shirt, taking Rocinante out to stretch his legs. 

The fields fly past underfoot and Regina loses herself in guilty memories. Rocinante, tuned to her by now, responds to her lightest touch. He decides the course for himself, more or less. It’s a silent reproach that she considered -- oh god, is still considering -- leaving him behind just like her sons.

When she makes it back an hour later, Henry is leaning on the paddock fence, watching the other horses canter back and forth in an aimless chase. He smiles at her, squinting in the late morning sun.

“Did your father send you to find me?” She asks as she dismounts.

“Nah, he called to say they’re going to some lunch at the pastor’s house. Said we should come along if we wanted, but they’d be there a while. Something about the church rafters.”

Regina nods. Robin’s been complaining about the building’s structure for at least a year now. Maybe he’s finally worn the pastor down and some of the iron-clad church coffers will be opened. 

“You want some bacon? I can put some on just as soon as I put this old boy back in the paddock with the others.”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Is everything alright?” Henry shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks a foot in the loose dirt by the gatepost. For a moment Regina is reminded so strongly of Emma that it staggers her. “Only you don’t seem all that happy to see us. Not like last year, I mean.”

“ _Mijo_ ,” Regina rushes to take him in a hug that he doesn’t wriggle out of. “I am always glad to see you. Don’t ever doubt that, okay? Did something happen at Grace’s last night?”

“Nah.” Henry escapes her grasp. “I mean, she was talking about how if I went to my safety school we could stay together and… it wasn’t great when I said I didn’t want to give up on my first choices, you know?”

“I can’t believe you’re almost off to college.”

“Just a few months. And you know the mail you left for me to open? I got a place at BCU.”

“BCU?”

“Boston Cambridge,” Henry supplies, trying very hard not to roll his eyes at his parochial mother. He clearly doesn’t notice that her heart has just stopped in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, now. You don't honestly think it's going to be that easy, do you? Remember, Regina still has Roland to consider. Not to mention the prospect of confessing to Robin.


	16. Chapter 16

“You… you want to move to Boston?”

“Maybe. I mean, I need one more answer and then I’m set. But it’s a good offer. I could even go to med school, if I keep my grades up.”

“Boston.”

“Mom, we talked about this. I said the whole time I might go out of state.” Henry is impatient with her, turning and walking backwards as they approach the house.

“You did,” Regina agrees. She laughs, and Henry looks at her, bewildered. “I’m very proud of you, Enrique. I just forgot that was one of your options.”

“Okay. Hey,” Henry asks when they hit the porch. “Grace said there was some photographer in town this week. Did you see her?”

“Why would I see her?” Regina snaps, and Henry looks at her in confusion. 

“I don’t… what do you even do when we’re not here? Go get groceries or something? I thought you might have heard the chatter in town.”

“The town doesn’t chatter, Henry. So, yes. I met her. She’s a very nice woman.” Just saying that much feels like confessing a secret and Regina has to busy herself in the kitchen to keep her face turned away from Henry as she blushes. “She’s been all over the world. Very interesting.”

“Huh.”

“What?” Regina feels sweat beginning to roll in beads at the base of her spine. She’s as jumpy as a criminal, but she knows her boy too well not to be concerned about the strangeness in his tone.

“You know Killian Jones?” Henry sits heavily at the table, drumming his fingers on the surface. “Well, no surprise he was hanging around last night. Offering to buy liquor for people, hitting on the high school girls as usual.”

“Enrique, that man is a drunk and a sleaze. I don’t want you spending any of your time with him, you understand?”

“I wasn’t!” Henry protests, holding up his hands in defense of what he jokingly calls her ‘island mama’ voice, usually followed by a gentle cuff around the back of his head. Regina can’t stop her hands trembling long enough to attempt any such playfulness this morning. “He was just there. Anyway, he said I should ask you about her. Winking about it so much it was like something was wrong with his eye.”

“I don’t know why he’d say that. Maybe he liked her, and saw us talking?”

“Well Grace said that Ruby said that her Granny said this lady kicked his ass. Like, actual fighting. Girls don’t fight, right?”

“They can,” Regina scolds. “What have I told you about assuming?” He doesn’t seem to be on to anything, she realizes, and allows herself to exhale slowly. “If Emma did hit him, I’m sure he earned it.”

“Isn’t that assuming?” Henry sasses right back. “Unless, uh, you know more about it?”

“Enrique, please! _No te vayas por las ramas_. Spit it out!” Her temper is getting up along with her nerves, and there may as well be a prison searchlight sweeping the kitchen for all the calm Regina can muster now.

“Shit.” Is all he says, bowing his head as though in prayer. “Mom, I thought he was crazy. But look at you.”

Emma’s noble sacrifice, the leaving early to keep their secret, the fervent wish to spare Henry and Roland from pain, it’s all been for nothing. A tiny part of Regina still wishes they’d left last night, set sail on cowardice and put the consequences off just a little bit longer.

“I’m not--”

“What happened? Oh God, does Dad even know? How could you… Mom!”

She bolts for the stairs, unsure how she even took the first step. All Regina can think is to get out. Get her things and bolt before Henry shares this inconvenient truth with Robin. Before Roland, her sweet, innocent boy, looks at her with the same confused contempt that Henry just did. How could she do this to them? How could she let it become the talk of the town? Talk that some well-meaning neighbor is no doubt trying to laugh about with Robin over coffee and cake at the pastor’s house, fishing all the while to find some nugget of truth in a scandalous rumor. Will Robin believe? Will it even cross his mind that his bored, farm-dowdy wife could get up to anything so damn interesting?

Will he come home in a rage, stopping only to unlock the gun safe? Or will she hear the truck pull up out front with only Roland stepping out, Robin broken and sobbing in the driver’s seat? Or will he fix her with one of his serious looks - the ones he thinks communicate feeling or anything important, but really leave Regina completely in the dark - and say no more about it?

Henry is hot on her heels, which Regina supposes is only to be expected. She hopes that he’s the fiercely loyal boy she raised him to be, even if that’s the worst possible thing for her personally in this moment. Ignoring him lurking in the doorway, she pulls her recently-unpacked suitcase out once more.

“You’re going?” Henry squeaks, sounding just like when his voice first broke. “Momma, please. What’s happening? Are you leaving Dad for some… some dyke?”

It’s as close as she’s ever come to slapping him. Raised by a mother who beat first and asked questions later, Regina has never lifted a hand to her boys, protesting Robin’s insistence on the occasional smack for discipline.

“Don’t you say that. Don’t you spit that word at me, so full of hate. You don’t know the first thing--”

“I know you’re walking out on us. God, Mom. What is up with you?”

“Don’t you get it? I couldn’t leave you!” Regina feels the unexpressed worries exploding out of her, the endless pros and cons and concealed wishes bursting forth like so many firecrackers. “I’m still here because I love you, and your little brother, too much to be apart from you.”

“I’m leaving in a couple of months,” Henry counters, arms folded and oozing skepticism. “So maybe it’s your favorite that you couldn’t leave, huh?”

“You know I don’t have favorites. You will always be my firstborn, Enrique. I named you for my father, and I loved him more than life itself. I love you exactly as much.”

“But not dad? Like, did you wake up this week and think ‘screw my family, I want to be with a woman?’ God, did you have sex?” He looks nauseated at the very idea. “How would that even… no, don’t tell… fuck!”

“Language!” Regina pleads, but her admonishment is weak. “Darling, I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t know what to do.”

“You should stay. That’s what people do. Moms and Dads stay, and they love each other, and even when you go away they should be right there for you to come home to.”

“I know. I never had that, but I know.”

“Abuelo died, that’s not the same thing. And Grandma, too. That’s not choosing to run away, Mom.” Henry steps closer, conflict written all over his features. “How did we not know you were so unhappy?”

“I wasn’t… unhappy.”

“Happy people don’t cheat on their husbands. They sure don’t abandon their kids.”

“What do you know of these things, hmm? You’re a boy, and no matter how much I love you, you don’t know what it’s like.”

“Then tell me. God, you think I want to see you suffering?”

“Enrique, please. Let’s just forget this ever happened. I won’t tell your father, we’ll mention nothing to Roland, and soon this will just be a distant memory. You’ll be focused on college, safely in Boston. You’ll be surprised how quickly you forget to think about us at all.”

“She’s from Boston, isn’t she? That’s why Boston made you go all weird? You’re thinking you can pack me off to Massachusetts and tell Dad you’re visiting when really you’ve got some girlfriend. That’s the kind of crap I’d expect a dad to pull, but not you.”

“Why the double standard, hmm?” Regina seizes on the opportunity to be in the right again, just for a second. “Sweetheart, I’d do anything to see you happy, to make sure you’ll always be healthy. I’d ask God to take me right here on the spot if it would give you a long and happy life, you know that, don’t you?”

“I thought I did.”

“Happiness is seductive. That’s all the explanation I have. I didn’t know anything was wrong until something so right came along. I deserve your scorn, and if you tell your father and he throws me out into the street, well. That’s no more than I deserve, too.” Regina cuts off Henry’s interruption with a wave of her hand. “With all of you gone I got a moment to really think about myself, to care about something more than getting dinner on the table or whether your school dance has enough chaperones. I’m sorry I gave in to that selfishness, but Enrique, I need to know what you’re going to do before your father gets home.”

Henry hesitates. 

Regina sees her life flash before her eyes. The boys as crying babies, Robin herding goats in the rain. Her father swinging a sugar cane through the air. Mother’s dark eyes full of disappointment. 

“I won’t say anything,” he finally decides. “But this is kind of weird for me.”

“I know. I’m sorry you ever had to find out, mijo.” Regina’s apology is sincere, at least.

“But not sorry you did it? Or that you met her?” Henry’s temper flares so quickly these days. Regina would be angrier at him if he hadn’t inherited that directly from her. “You know what? Never mind. Just know that I pretty much hate you right now.”

It’s as cruel as he’s capable of being, and Regina takes it like a knife to the heart. Weak at the knee, she pushes the suitcase away from her and tries to catch her breath through errant sobs, clutching at her chest as though to stop it from cracking right down the middle. 

She barely has time to worry about it though, because Robin’s truck has just pulled into the driveway.

***

Sunday afternoon brings an unforgiving beam of light where Emma neglected to close the curtains. It’s not enough to rouse her from sleep, not when she’s wrestled the sheets into enough of a mess to hide her head in. 

No. What’s waking her is the ringing of the telephone, and she almost breaks her neck diving across the mattress to grab it.

“Regina?”

“Call for you, Miss Swan.”

“Put it through!” Emma is desperate, and she isn’t afraid to show it to some hotel operator. “Regina? Is that you?”

“Emma?” It’s a whisper. A whisper Emma recognizes in less than an instant, and she knows she would recognize it even fifty years from now. Her stomach plummets as she considers all the reasons Regina might have to whisper, not least a raging husband.

“You okay? You want me to come get you?”

“I… can’t. I just. Enrique, he knows.”

“That’s your kid, right?” Emma’s mouth is still sandpaper-dry from too much Scotch before bed. “Does that mean your husband knows? If he’s mad, you get the hell out of there. Just run as far as you can, or take Rocinante and I will come get you.”

“Robin doesn’t know. He came back from church and went right out to fix one of the tractors.”

“Okay, so…?”

“I hadn’t made a decision. Henry yelled at me, and now he’s gone to his girlfriend’s place. He says he won’t tell.”

“Ah.” Emma’s world rights itself from sickening hope to the dull misery she’s felt since leaving Iowa. “So you’re still safe. You don’t need an escape route, right?”

“I want to. God, I want to. But how can I leave Roland? He’s innocent in all of this. And Henry… he got into college in Boston. Can you believe that?” Regina chokes on the stifled little laugh that follows. “But he knows you live there.”

“So?”

“So he isn’t going to let me come out for the weekend just to cheat on his father. I wouldn’t do that. I hope you know me well enough to know that, at least.”

“Don’t get pissed at me, Regina. I said all along it was your marriage, and your choice. You don’t get to blame me because it got tough.”

“Everything gets tough.” Regina counters, and her voice is warming up now, no longer a whisper. “This is the toughest decision I’ll ever make.”

“So come with me. Come to Boston and see your kid when he’s in college. And Roland can come live with us, or just on the holidays. I don’t know how the hell it works, but we can make it work. You just have to want it.”

“So I leave my husband here, all alone? He’s done nothing wrong and I walk away with everything?”

“If you love me like you say you do… it’s not like you can help it. We can’t help who we fall in love with. I wouldn’t love someone who’s married. Or who’s a woman, if we’re talking about convenient.”

“I can’t talk much longer. Robin, he doesn’t do much work on Sundays. It’s because he’s been away so long, he thinks the place will fall apart without him.”

“Will it fall apart without you?”

Regina breathes slowly into the phone. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I said not to call unless you want me to come get you. I guess I stand by that.” It’s taking the last of Emma’s willpower not to beg. Not to burst into tears and plead with Regina to be the first person to choose Emma over anything else at all. It’s a longing so sharp it almost drowns out the guilt of potentially stealing a parent away from kids who might still need her. If she were evil, Emma considers, she’d say those lucky little bastards got 15 years longer than she ever did. Why be greedy about one or two more?

“I’m sorry,” Regina is whispering again. “I need to make things right here. Then we can decide, okay?”

“I leave in 24 hours. I guess that’s kind of a natural deadline.” Emma knows she could say she’ll wait in Boston, but the agony of twisting in the wind and waiting for a note in the mail someday is more than she can bear right now. “I won’t hate you either way. Just know how much I want you to say yes, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And for what it’s worth I do love you. I’m crazy about you like I’ve never been. But that means I care enough to give you peace if you say no. You’ll never be bothered by me again, Regina.”

“You could never bother me.” There’s a thud in the background. “I gotta go.”

“Sure.”

Emma gives herself the satisfaction of hanging up first. It’s better than waiting for that final click and terminal buzzing in her ear. 

She’ll get up, in just a minute. She’ll pour a glass of water, maybe two, and fish out some dissolving aspirin from her camera case pockets. Right now, though, Emma’s content to lie on the rumpled, uncomfortable white sheets and clear up the mess in her head where another round of hopes just got dashed.


	17. Chapter 17

“Regina?”

“Hmm?”

“I asked if we’re having the beef for dinner?” Robin comes across the kitchen in his stockinged feet, church shoes kicked off on the porch. His shirt is open and his t-shirt beneath it is soaked through with sweat. The tie he wore to church is nowhere in evidence, no doubt rolled up and shoved in either the glove compartment of the truck or his jacket pocket. He makes no move to touch her, not even a peck on the cheek. He’s far more interested in the potatoes she’s peeling.

“Chicken,” she corrects. “Where are the boys?”

“Roland went down to see the horses. Henry’s already out there with the goats. I told them not to take too long, you must have missed them.”

“I missed you all.”

“We missed you too, Gina. Henry get out of his bunk at a decent time? He was late back from the big Grace reunion.” 

“I saw him, briefly.” Regina starts chopping the potatoes into quarters. “I don’t think he ate anything though, they’ll both be starving.”

“Not the only ones.” Robin pats his stomach and takes a seat at the kitchen table. “Were you on the phone, before? I didn’t really stop to check, just wanted to check that tractor brake.”

“Yeah. Kathryn, checking you all got back okay.”

“Oh. Well, I waved to her at church, she should have known that already.”

Regina stiffens. She’s a terrible liar, and this day is turning from bad to worse every time she opens her foolish mouth. 

“She didn’t see Henry. You know she has a soft spot for him.” It’s a flimsy cover, but the best she can manage. The potatoes are thrown carelessly into a pot, water poured over them because the noise will prevent Robin saying anything more for a moment. “Robin, I think we need to--”

“Funny feeling about this place today.” He never interrupts her. “I reckon I feel a bit like Daddy Bear. _Someone’s been sittin’ in my chair_. Weirdest damn feeling, considering everything looks just like normal. Now, why do you think that is?”

“Robin--”

“Anyway, maybe I’m just going crazy in my old age, hmm?” Robin clasps his fingers together, calloused hand wrapped around calloused hand. “It’s funny, I was just talking to the boys on the way home about how maybe we should see if there’s any money to take a little trip this summer. I’ve been saying every year since Roland could walk that I’d love to take you back to the island, let you visit the old house and all.”

“You have?”

“Seems I mention it whenever I’m on a long drive with Henry. At least, that’s what he says.”

“We couldn’t… who would run things here? And flights? Pfft, those cost as much as a new steer, when there’s four of us.”

“So we’d drive to Florida, maybe. It was just a thought. Anyways, the crop isn’t what it could be, you know that. But a long weekend somewhere with a lake wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“That sounds nice.” It does, even in her panicked state. Even a temporary reprieve, with a son who hates her and a faintly suspicious husband, sounds like bliss right now. Regina hasn’t felt this kind of wanderlust since her teens, since her island became a stopping point for thousands of people part of the way through some big adventure. 

“Town’s been buzzing about this photographer.” Robin looks at her finally. Regina’s heart sinks, because either Killian Jones has found religion or he’s shot his mouth off to enough people who have. “I love these fields as much as the next boy born and raised here, but for the life of me I can’t think what some National Geographic gal would find to take a picture of.”

 _Me,_ Regina wants to shout. _This ‘gal’ has seen five of the Seven Wonders and she paused to take a second look at your dull wife in her cotton dresses and flat shoes. She looked at me like I was the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon in one, and I don’t know how to come back into a world where that never happens._

Instead, she bursts into tears.

“Hey.” Robin stands then, and the comfort is both effective and automatic when he wraps his arms around her. “Hon, I know this isn’t everything I promised you back when we were starting out, but I’ve never seen you this unhappy.”

“I am,” Regina finally admits. It takes her remaining strength to pull back from the safety of his embrace, from everything she’s known for the best part of two decades. She can feel her last chance at happiness slipping through her fingers as quickly as the sand on a Vieques beach, and in that instant her mind is finally made up. “Robin, you are a good man. You’ve given me a good life and two beautiful sons. I told myself I never wanted more than this, but we both know that wasn’t true, don’t we?”

“I always thought you marrying me was more about escaping your mother and all those parties she’d drag you to,” Robin confesses. “I s’pose I didn’t care, so long as it meant you were choosing me.”

“You were quite a catch, you know.”

“Oh yeah. I was something back then, in my uniform. Thin as a whippet and headstrong with it. My own mama always said I could have had my pick instead of some temptress from the islands. But then she was a straight up racist, God rest her soul.”

Regina smiles at his teasing. Her mother-in-law had been no such thing, the only person to welcome her to Iowa as enthusiastically as Robin. The teasing is like a balm to her soul right now, even if she doesn’t deserve it.

“That feeling you had...”

“Don’t tell me. If I never hear it, it doesn’t have to be true. Bad enough about the chair, but I guess I don’t need to hear who’s been sleepin’ in my bed, do I?”

“You don’t want to get angry? You don’t want to throw me out in the street?” Regina is skeptical of this understanding approach. There has to be another shoe there, ready to drop.

“Have I ever raised a hand to you?” Regina shakes her head. That much, at least, is true. It’s another reason she has no right to run, no right to ask for anything more. “Then let’s assume I don’t intend to start now,” Robin concludes.

“I’m sorry that I--”

“Was it Daniel? I know you think I don’t notice anything, but he’s been soft on you for years.”

Regina tilts her head in confusion. What the hell is he talking about?

“Daniel? No, it was Emma. The photographer.”

“Wait, a _woman_?” That’s when the red rises in his cheeks at last. The calm disposition that so rarely shifts is fading before her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Regina. I was going to accept my failings as a husband if another man stole you away from me. But you’re some kind of deviant? Have you been this way all along?”

“I don’t know! I don’t think so!” Regina is pleading now. “I never intended for any of this to happen. I thought my story was told, here with you. I thought I would sit here in this kitchen every day for the rest of my days until one day I just wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t know there was more to come along.”

“Listen, it’s not too late to get you to a doctor. You hear all kinds of things about these psychiatrists, hell, the Hopper’s boy trained as one! I’m sure he’d fit you in for a consult, his offices are in Des Moines, last I heard.”

“You’re sick, Momma?” Roland appears in the doorway, his bottom lip already quivering at overhearing that much. “Why do you need a doctor?”

“Never mind, son,” Robin moves towards him, laying heavy hands on his shoulders. “Your mom’s just had a tough week without us, but we’re gonna get everything back to normal.”

“Like hell,” Regina growls. It’s only now when she sees how Roland has really grown. Even with tears threatening in his eyes, he’s barely a boy anymore. If she can find a way to do this without him hating her, where he stills wants to see her or even better come with her, then maybe all is not entirely lost. “Roland, sweetheart. If Momma was to go and live somewhere else, you’d want to come with me, wouldn’t you?”

“What, why?”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Robin does turn on her then, crossing the room in three angry strides, his face contorted in anger. She wants to laugh, despite the dread, because there’s something simian in that rage that she’s tried not to notice over the years. The love that’s turned to fondness over the years is dissipating rapidly in the face of this ugliness. “You’re not taking my kids from me,” Robin continues. “I’ll run you out of town, first.”

“Momma, where are you going? This is our home, you can’t leave. Henry! Momma’s leaving.”

“Oh, you sure changed your mind fast,” Henry accuses, looming over his brother in the doorway. “Guess I should have expected that.”

“Don’t you dare all turn on me!” Regina finds her voice fully now, and she doesn’t hesitate when they all shrink back at her sudden fury. “I have cleaned and cooked and cared for all of you with hardly any thanks in return. You expect, you demand, and you just assume I’ll always be right here with nothing to do but pick up after you.”

“That’s your job!” Robin shouts right back. “You’re a wife, and you’re a mother!”

“I am a _person_ , too!” Regina refuses to concede the little ground she’s fought for. “When is the last time any of you asked me about anything other than what’s for dinner? Or told me something other than what matters to you? Do you ever see a painting and think ‘Momma would like this, I should tell her to come see it?’ Or read a book in school and wonder if I read it, too? No, of course not. Unless it’s because you expect me to finish your homework while you go out playing with your friends.”

“Look, Mom,” Henry is the peacemaker once more. “We probably do take you for granted, and I know we’re all sorry about that. But is that a good enough reason to leave us? C’mon...”

“I don’t know if I can,” Regina admits. “I’m going to take some things and go stay with Kathryn tonight, okay? Maybe things will look different in the morning. And we can all calm down.”

“If you walk out that door today, you ain’t coming back,” Robin warns, but Roland lays a hand on his dad’s arm.

“He doesn’t mean that, Momma. Go see Kathryn and maybe you’ll feel better about staying. We’ll come see you in the morning.”

“You’re a good boy,” Regina says to him, not daring to cross over and embrace either of her sons. “You too, Henry. Please know that I have always wanted to be your mother, and I always will, whatever happens.”

“We know,” Roland answers, his dark eyes shiny with tears. He hasn’t cried in front of her for a long time now, and it breaks her heart all over again.

“I’ll just get my things,” Regina sighs.

***

Emma finally comes to a stop at the side of the wardrobe, grasping her knees and falling into the protective bundle she learned at the age of four. 

There’s no one to beat her here. 

There’s the debris of her own frustration - feathers from punched pillows still drifting through the air and sheets covering the floor instead of the bed. She’s knocked a lamp over but the damage doesn’t seem permanent, just a shattered bulb that can be replaced.

Her breathing is still ragged, no matter how much air she sucks down, her chest just refuses to expand fully. The lightheadedness will pass, but at least feeling dizzy makes the realization that Regina is never coming, that it’s all been for nothing, a little easier to bear. 

She can’t be here anymore, she realizes. It’s probably too late to catch a flight to Boston, but at least the airport corridors are long and built for pacing. No claustrophobia in a building that big and airy.

When her breathing starts to regulate and her chest doesn’t hurt so much, Emma unfolds herself and picks her way carefully around the room, righting everything she’s spilled in her rage. It would be so easy to walk out now, pay cash and never worry about the poor maid who’d spend three times as long as she should on the room, and Emma’s been a guest in too many places to leave a mess like that.

Her bags are barely unpacked but cleaning up her impromptu darkroom takes longest of all. It would be better, probably, to leave the developed shots of Regina in the trash there. All the better to forget her. But Emma knows she’s far too deeply in love to ever part with them, and the photos are slotted into the only blank album spaces she has left, the work ones stuffed in envelopes and hastily packed alongside. 

Five minutes, Emma decides. She’ll sit on the remade bed for five more minutes, and if she’s wrong the universe will take this opportunity to show her. It’s the last roll of the dice from a first-time optimist, but Emma can’t help herself.

If there’s no sign in the next five minutes, well. She already knows what she has to do.

***

It takes a good hour to get Kathryn to even listen to the story, such is her surprise at Regina showing up at Sunday dinner with a small suitcase and tears running down her face. Fred calls out from where he’s resting in the sitting room, but as one of Robin’s friends, Regina doesn’t dare face him for more than a second.

“Well!” Kathryn gasps when Regina finally gets the whole story out over strong coffee laden with sugar. “You’re into blondes, huh? I guess I should be a little offended you passed me over.”

Despite herself, Regina laughs. How could she have forgotten Kathryn’s giving nature? This counsel could have made the past week infinitely easier. 

“The boys will come around,” Kathryn decides when the laughter calms. “Whatever happens, and I’m including staying here… with or without Robin. Those boys love you, and you’ve spent your life devoted to them.”

“It feels ungrateful to skip out almost at the end. I’m sorry if I--”

“Our daughter just wasn’t meant for this world, it turns out. So don’t you feel bad about that, Regina. I wanted kids more than just about anything, but I’ve seen from the other side how people forget that you might want anything else. Would I feel differently if you came here with Roland a babe in arms and Henry barely in kindergarten? I think I would. Anyone would. And you, my friend, wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“You’re saying I’m not completely evil?”

“I’m saying maybe there’s a reason that opportunity didn’t coming knocking until now.”

Regina snorts. “If you start talking about destiny and soulmates, I’m going to sleep in the barn.”

“Sure you wouldn’t rather I drive you to Chicago?”

“An eight-hour round trip? I think Fred might have something to say about that.”

“Well, I think your mind is nearly made up, if you’re here. You could have lied to Henry and Robin, if you wanted to save that marriage badly enough.” Kathryn’s tone is still comforting, but there’s a steely determination to her words. Regina has never appreciated this forthrightness more. “But I think you should call this girl and make sure she waits for you. There’s no guarantee you’ll be ready to meet that one specific flight.”

“You think I should?”

“Regina, don’t you want to go?”

“...I do.”

“Oh thank God. I thought you’d never admit it to yourself. Whatever the boys decide about moving or coming with you, you know we’ll keep an eye on them any time you can’t. Now go, get your happy ending. Or at least tell it to hold up until you put your life in order.”

Regina blushes, excusing herself to use the phone in the hallway. The Holiday Inn number is memorized, and she’s amazed that her fingers don’t tremble as she dials.

“Miss Swan, please.” She realizes she never got the room number, but it wasn’t a problem last time. The clerk pauses, obviously checking the guest list.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Miss Swan checked out a little while ago.”

“Did she say why?”

“Well… no. Why would she… I wasn’t on duty, but there’s no note of any problem here.”

“She’s really gone?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Regina hangs up, and by now her hands are trembling so badly that she can’t quite get the receiver into the cradle.

So much for that happy ending.


	18. Chapter 18

The clerk doesn’t question her checking out early, and Emma feels a pang at once again slipping beneath the radar, never expected by anyone or particularly noticed. Freedom is rewarding, she couldn’t ever give it up entirely. The glimmer of having something more has intoxicated her, and it’s going to be a hell of a hangover trying to forget the way Regina’s careful, devoted attention made her feel.

O’Hare is painfully quiet, Emma’s lightly squeaking footsteps echoing throughout the concourse as she seeks out a place to drown her sorrows and hunker down. Come morning, she’ll switch to an earlier flight, and the misery of counting down until one will be averted.

At least, that’s what she tells herself as she beckons to the bartender at the nearly-deserted bar. 

***

“Regina?”

Kathryn is obviously bursting for a further shot of gossip, but the minutes of stunned silence must have finally become obvious by the way she rushes to hold Regina up where she’s slumped against the wall.

“It’s too late,” Regina manages to mutter once Kathryn has a strong grip on her. “Oh God, when I called earlier it must have sounded like I was looking for a way to stay and she’s gone early.”

“So you show up in Boston. Take a cab right to her door.”

“I don’t have her address. We didn’t… we didn’t make a backup plan.”

“Oh, honey.” Kathryn considers for a moment. “Still she’s bound to call in the morning, maybe one last chance…”

“She said she wouldn’t bother me if I said no. And when I called, before… she thought that’s what I was saying.”

“And that’s it?” Kathryn sighs. “Jesus, Regina. There’s plenty of people would have judged you when you showed up saying what you did. Plenty of people would have told you to be a good wife and crawl back to Robin, whether it meant a beating or not. Now you tell me you’re going to give up on this like a high school crush? At the first goddamned obstacle?”

“My lady wife has a point,” Fred says, leaning heavily on the frame of the sitting room door. He’s pale and gaunt, the cancer taking him harder by the week, but Regina wouldn’t ever hurt his feelings by looking away. She summons a watery smile for him, and he nods in acknowledgment. “You know Robin’s been a friend to me all these years, and frankly I think marriage is for life, whatever comes along. But I know enough to know he ain’t been happy these last few years, either. He’s certainly had his head turned, and that doesn’t happen to a man still in love with his wife. Times like that you either dig in and push through, or you accept that both of you are pointing in different directions.”

“Meaning someone gives up their direction, or you pick a new one together. Fred and I, we didn’t expect our lives to go the way they did, especially not this bastard tumor. But it’s made us closer. That’s not how it goes with everyone.”

“But if Kathryn came to me tomorrow and said she wanted to join you in some lesbian commune in Boston, if it would truly make her happy… well, I’d tell her to go.”

“You would not,” Kathryn scoffs. “Talk serious, Fred.”

“You don’t think I want happiness for you when I’m gone? The worst part about dying is leaving you sad and alone, Kat. That’s the last thing I wanted to do to you.”

“Now,” Kathryn is startled for a moment, before enveloping her frail husband in a hug. “What did I tell you about that d-word, you silly old fool?”

Regina watches them, her oldest friends here in Iowa, hand clutching through her dress towards her heart. This love, this understanding that she’s taken for granted at a polite distance all these years, is suddenly breathtaking to her. It isn’t Robin she sees when she pictures herself in a similar moment; it’s Emma, completely and as clear as if she were standing there in the hallway right now.

Confirmation, if such a thing ever exists, and Regina doesn’t dare move her clenched hand for the irrational fear that her rapidly-beating heart will burst right out of her chest and explode all over the flocked wallpaper in Kathryn’s hall. 

Regina loves Emma, just as surely as she felt that love returned. It’s not a fad, not a passing fancy, nor the whim of a bored housewife in the early days of the Iowa summer. This is a beautiful, tangible thing and more than anything she needs to make her boys understand. Enrique and Roland with their lengthening limbs and ever-expanding hearts will come to see a happier mother, will perhaps even make room for Emma in their lives. One day, a Christmas or a Thanksgiving, or Henry’s graduation, they might sit down to dinner as an awkward group of five, two families sharing two sons. Her years with Robin, the genuine and respectful love they’ve shared, don’t need to be consigned to the trash. It sounds a little too much like having everything, but Regina’s tired of being an expert in getting by on just enough.

The sun will be setting soon, and she knows she can’t hide out here any longer. If she’s to stand any chance of catching Emma in Chicago, she has to find out which flights might go earlier and use the time between now and then to make her babies understand how much she still loves them. Maybe it’s impossible, but Fred and Kathryn are right that she’d be a coward not to even try. How many people are presented love and a second chance on a platter? From a photographer in a rented truck, here to photograph bridges that nobody has cared much about in forty years, at that.

“Kathryn, can I make one more call? I’ll leave some money for the--”

“Never mind that,” Kathryn waves it away. “You make whatever calls you need to, to put this right. Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that determined set you have to your chin just now? I haven’t seen that since the first day we met, when you got all upset over me thinking you were Mexican.” Kathryn sniggers. “Actually, I’ve seen it a few times since, but I guess I thought you’d broken the habit.”

“Do you think the operator can get me through to someone at O’Hare?”

“Doubt they’ve got much else to do on a Sunday evening,” Kathryn teases. “Go on, get on with it and I’ll fix you a sandwich. Sounds to me like you have a plan.”

***

For a minute, Emma could have sworn she heard her name over the crackling PA system, but it’s really just echoing noise in the barnlike structure of the departures area. 

She nods to the barkeep, and a fresh not-quite-cold-enough beer appears on the coaster in front of her a moment later.

***

Regina sits in her own driveway for ten full minutes, stress-eating a turkey sandwich and gazing at the only home she’s known for almost nineteen years. They must have heard her drive up, someone always hears the wheels on gravel and most often the person to hear it has been her. Perhaps the boys are just expecting her back, or Robin doesn’t care, but either way no one appears on the porch to confirm her return.

Eventually she summons the last scraps of courage and marches right into her own kitchen. Finding it empty, she crosses to the living room and sees Robin slumped in the armchair, feet on the table and a large measure of bourbon in his glass. Roland is sprawled across the couch, lost in some comic or other. Regina tries not to blush at the thought of throwing those cushions on the floor to have her wicked way with Emma. Henry isn’t anywhere to be seen, but he comes bouncing down the stairs a moment later as though her thought had summoned him. There’s a baseball in his hand and he brushes past her to take the other chair, tossing the ball casually in the air a few times and catching it with the habitual smack of palm against worn leather. 

“I need to talk to you, Robin. Boys, you can stay, or I’ll come talk to you right after. You decide.”

“Are you coming back?” Roland peeks out from behind his comic, clearly still upset.

“That’s not what I came to talk about, no.”

“Oh.”

Henry just snorts. Robin doesn’t look up for a long moment, but when he does he has the decency to meet her eye.

“I’m sorry for hurting you. All of you. I never meant for any of this… but I want to make this choice as fairly as I know how. You understand? What’s clear is that this house, this life, it’s been making me less happy day by day. It’s been so gradual I don’t think any of us have noticed it happening. Tell me, querido.” It’s a risk to address Robin that way, the flirtatious pet name of their youth. “Were you as happy six days ago as you were on the day we met? The day we married?”

Robin’s fight is gone. He expels the last of it in a sigh. 

He shakes his head: an admission. Regina realizes the man who would fight for her is long gone. When did he leave? She couldn’t say. She’s a little heartsick to see that he’s also giving up on keeping their family together, something she could never have imagined even as the affection between them waned and things became so grindingly routine. She supposes she should be pleased at one less obstacle to clamber over, but it dampens into disappointment instead.

“What do you want?” He’s gruff, self-pitying, but Regina can’t get sucked back into feeling sorry for him now. Of course she’ll lie awake nights wondering if he’s okay, if he’s looking after himself, but that responsibility is one she’s divesting herself of tonight.

“I want to take the truck, my truck, to Chicago. I want you to sell the horses to Daniel, he won’t be able to pay in one lump sum, so work out something fair over a couple of years. He’s the only one I trust.”

“I’ll wire the money to you?”

“I’d like that. I’ll get… I’ll find a job. In Boston. But we bought Rocinante with my inheritance, so I’d like--”

“Fine.” Robin waves a hand. “Take whatever you want. If it’s yours, I guess it’s not something I need anyhow.”

“How civil,” Henry mocks, grip tight on the baseball now. Regina glares at him for just a second, because everything in his expression says he’d like to hurl it at her head. “Christ Pop, I didn’t know you’d be such a pussy about it.”

That, it turns out, is what it takes to provoke Robin into action.

“You watch your mouth!” Robin is across the space between them in an instant, hoisting Henry out of the chair with a firm grip on his t-shirt. “Whatever happens, that is still your mother, and you will talk to both of us with respect!”

“She cheated!”

“Well, yeah.” Robin deflates again for a moment. “But if you think I didn’t have my chances? You’re a fool, boy. Don’t claim to know more than you do.”

Regina feels her stomach flip at the implication Robin might have cheated on her, bravado and bluster though it might be. It’s not the devastation that the very idea would have caused her once, though, and it feels like just another sign.

“Boys, you’re welcome to come with me, to Boston. I need to leave very soon to make sure I don’t miss the early flight, because it’s a hell of a drive. Roland, you want to pack a bag? We can fix your school and anything else you need once we get there. Henry, I know you’re coming for college soon anyway, but you can come get to know the city.”

She expects Robin to rage and rant, claiming the boys like riverbed spots during a gold rush, but he simply releases Henry and looks at each of his sons in turn.

“I’m not happy about you going anywhere,” he admits as the silence stretches on. “But your mother has never done anything but right by both of you. You’re almost men in your own right, so you decide. You stay here then everything will be just as you like it. Your friends, helping out around the farm, we’ll muddle through as best we can.”

Henry has been fuming since Robin grabbed him, but when he turns to Regina the softness returns to his features.

“Momma, are you even sure you still love us?”

“Oh, Enrique!” Regina grabs him in a smothering hug, the kind he hasn’t allowed since before his teens began. He doesn’t squirm or groan in disgust, but instead he allows himself to shake a little, tears beginning to leak onto her shoulder. “Of course I love you. Nothing in this world or any other would ever make me stop.”

“But we made you miserable,” Henry sobs against her shoulder. “Look how much you had to change to get happy.”

“C’mere,” she gestures to Roland, who bounds across to join their emotional embrace. “Mijos, you are everything good I have ever had in my life. I would die for either one of you in a heartbeat, that’s never going to be in question. And I will always love your father, and I will always be glad we made this beautiful family, okay?”

“Okay,” Roland is crying now, too. Robin stands apart, fists clenching and unclenching, trying desperately to fight back his own tears.

“This is not about regret. I don’t want to go back in time or rewrite my story. This was meant to happen and I am so glad that it did. If you really can’t be without me, I’ll stay. Of course I will. Say you need me, that your mother’s love is no good a few states away and I’ll stay for you. I’ll go anywhere you need me to, and I’ll stay wherever you need me.”

“Of course we need you,” Henry is gathering himself now. He looks to his father with an unspoken question. “But, I guess… we maybe don’t need you in the same way. Maybe everything you do for us isn’t the love, huh? Maybe we just like the food and the clean house and the fresh clothes.”

“Maybe,” Regina is so proud of him in that moment. She’s been proud of him every moment of his life, but it’s enough to make her want to burst all over again. “Roland? You want to come with me? If you want to wait I can send you a plane ticket in a few weeks?”

“I love you, Momma,” Roland hugs her all over again, on his own this time. “But Henry’s going to college soon. I think I should stay with Pop and finish school, don’t you?”

“That’s so sensible,” Regina admits. “But the thought of being away from you so long.”

“I’ll come on the holidays,” Roland promises. “You get Henry in term time and me over the holidays. We can do a crossover week with you and another with dad, so you get both. That’s how Nicholas’s parents do it. His dad went back to New York when they divorced.”

“Oh. Wow.” Regina didn’t expect such rationality from her youngest son. She looks at Robin and they share a moment of mutual amazement. “That sounds like a plan, I guess? I can’t believe we’re really talking about this.”

“Well, we are,” Robin finally chimes in again. “Listen, Gina. You said you had an early flight and with the best will in the world, I’ve been about as reasonable as I think I could be, given the circumstances. If I go grab the rest of your things, can you say your goodbyes with the boys?”

“That would be… yeah.” Regina smiles at him as kindly as she ever has. “Boys, you come outside with me. I need to say goodbye to Rocinante, too.”

They trudge down to the stables in fading light, each boy holding her hand without complaint. Only when they reach Rocinante does Regina let them go for a moment, patting Rocinante’s regal nose and muttering a soft goodbye to him in Spanish that she makes sure the boys don’t overhear. He’s been her freedom when she thought she had none. He’s given her the wind in her hair and earth pounded into nothing beneath his feet. Until Emma, he’s been her one escape, and only the knowledge that Daniel is completely gone on Rocinante makes her able to leave him at all.

They don’t linger, mostly because Regina feels silly being emotional over a horse. Once the goodbye is said she reaches for her sons again, wrapping an arm around each of their waists this time as they walk, marveling at how they both tower over her, Roland not slumping as usual lets her see how tall he’s truly grown.

At the truck, Roland is the first to hug her again. 

“Call me tomorrow?” He pleads. “I want to know you’re safe in Boston. And this woman better be… Momma, you can always, always come back. Okay? I’ll make sure it’s okay.”

“But if you really like Boston, Ro will be up to visit real soon, like he said. We’ll save our allowances for tickets. Or maybe for gas and road trip it. It’s a long summer, right?”

“Road trip?” Regina squeaks.

“Yeah, like the one we’re having right now,” Henry says, dangling the keys that he obviously picked from her pocket at some point. “Someone has to drive you and come back. Otherwise you’re just stranding the truck at the airport.”

“Oh.” Regina hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t think I want you driving all the way back on your own, Enrique.”

“Mom, I have a license. And they’re big, straight roads. I’ll be fine.”

“Can I come?” Roland lights up at the prospect of another trip.

“Nah, kiddo.” Henry lets him down gently. “You gotta keep an eye on Pop. Hide the bourbon if you have to, okay? He’ll regret it tomorrow.”

Regina casts a glance to the shadows on the porch. There’s no sign of Robin, but he’s watching, from somewhere. She looks at the back of the truck and sees two new bags thrown in there, bulging with the rest of her clothes and whatever else he’s seen fit to send with her. It feels so eerily like her mother shipping her off to her new husband that Regina is momentarily dizzy with the memories.

“She might not even be there. I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispers. It’s almost exactly what she said trying on her wedding dress that last night at home in Esperanza. Thankfully, her sons are more compassionate than her mother ever was. 

“Well,” Henry replies. “It kind of looks like you already are. C’mon, two more minutes of smothering the kid with Mom kisses and then we should probably get going. The night’s already getting away from us, and you said the flight was early.”

“Five more minutes,” Regina compromises, and she has exactly that with Roland, smoothing his hair and blurting out every piece of motherly advice she has for him. When they finally part, it’s with a promise that they’ll see each other before the month is out, however that has to happen.

Regina climbs into the passenger seat with some reluctance, watching Henry’s every move like a hawk as he guns the engine. She waves to Roland until he’s a blur in front of her tears, the night swallowing him and the house all too quickly in the encroaching darkness.

She tries to relax as Henry picks up speed when they turn onto the main road. It’s only then that she sees her medal of St. Christopher, returned to the nightstand when Emma left, wrapped around the rearview mirror and dangling like some sort of talisman. The picture of the fort is on the seat between her and Henry, and as final gestures go, her husband has outdone himself after too many years of not trying.

Reaching for the medallion, Regina is about to fasten it around her own neck when she has a better idea.

“Give me your hand,” she instructs her eldest son.

“And remove it from the sacred 10 and 2 position?” Henry gasps, mocking her easily once more. 

“Enrique…”

“Fine,” he sighs, offering her his right hand. She pours the chain and the medal into it, making sure he doesn’t look for too long. He glances once, twice and then his eyes are back on the road.

“You’ve had this a long time, haven’t you?”

“My father gave it to me. He told me to have a long and adventurous life wearing it. I loved him very much.”

“Don’t you need it? Being a middle-aged lesbian sure sounds like an adventure.”

Regina smacks him lightly on the wrist for that one. He pops the medal in his pocket and rests both hands back on the wheel.

“You’re the one starting your adventures. I won’t cramp your style while we’re both in Boston. But I have to admit it’s making this possible, the thought of seeing you sometimes.” Regina pauses, trying to fight back even more tears. “He’s the patron saint of travelers, and you’ve got a long way to go, darling.” 

“Yeah, four hours at least. That’s assuming we can even find the airport,” Henry sasses. “But seriously, Mom. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to wear it.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Okay. You’re sure you can drive us all the way there?”

“Mom…”


	19. Chapter 19

Emma Swan can sleep anywhere.

Off the top of her head she can name dozens of places less comfortable than this metal airport bench on which she’s stubbornly spending the night. It would cost her nothing, really, to go back to the hotel, or one of the other hotels and check in under a different name. Somehow though, that feels like cheating, like actively denying Regina a chance to change her mind. Hiding out in the departure halls isn’t much better but Emma’s had enough drinks to rationalize her actions and call it neutrality.

It’s not like someone who’s staying with her precious family and her perfect kids who’ve never felt unwanted a day in their lives, probably, would have called to find out if there were any night flights to Boston. Emma knows the fact of the next one being at 6:30am has extended the window of opportunity just a little, but she refuses to buy into that last scrap of hope. Except, if she was really so determined she could have taken any old flight still going out after dusk and connected. She could have retrieved the rental truck and swallowed the killer one-way supplement. Desperate enough, she could have walked or caught a Greyhound to anywhere at all.

She’s not waiting. She’s not expecting. 

She is, however, lying on her back and ignoring the twinges just above her butt caused by the unforgiving surface. If she could get comfortable sleeping in the dirt in Tanzania, on packing crates in Phoenix (splinters and all) or the particular hell of a juvie bunk, there should be no reason to lie awake on this functional bench with a rolled-up jacket for a pillow. She’s surprised no one has tried to move her along, but the airport is still nominally open, gearing up for its first arrivals and departures of the day.

Staring up at the glass ceiling, stars twinkling faintly in the inky sky, all Emma can do is replay every word and every touch of her time with Regina. Eyes open, eyes closed, Regina’s face is all she sees. Emma knows she’s been crying, her skin feels cracked and tight, and more than once she’s had to tilt her head to stop the annoying tears from rolling into her ears. It’s been so long since she let herself cry that she forgot not to do it lying on her back; at least she hasn’t lost the ability to do it in almost perfect silence.

Somewhere not too far, the smell of brewing coffee is getting stronger by the minute. Emma’s stomach gurgles in response and she mentally promises herself breakfast if she can just get a little nap first. She closes her eyes, tries to think about nothing, and fails just as spectacularly as every other attempt in the last three hours.

***

“Enrique,” Regina murmurs, pushing the hair from her son’s forehead as he sleeps in the passenger seat. “Sweetheart, we’re here.”

The fear is back, real and all-encompassing. The wise thing to do, hell, the motherly thing to do would be to turn around and drive them both home while Henry has been kind enough to give her the opportunity. They’d switched seats just outside Iowa City, the first and only brief stop. Regina’s logic that he’d have to drive back alone was sound, and he’d reluctantly let her drive the rest of the way, promptly falling asleep before they could settle on a new radio station. Regina’s been playing that blues station Emma loves so much quietly the whole way, and trying to quell the butterflies in her stomach.

Having never driven to Chicago herself, Regina’s impressed by how little consulting of the map has been required. Of course there’s a certain sense of direction that comes from living in the country all this time, and it’s pretty much ‘keep heading east’ through cities she’s never really seen, like Davenport and Aurora, the latter of which she keeps saying under her breath once she sees the signs for it. They whizz past on the Interstate, the Illinois section new and finished unlike the disjointed sections of it in eastern Iowa. It’s an old habit from when she first arrived, rolling words around in her mouth to make them familiar, or sometimes just because they felt fun to say, like Altoona. 

Henry stirs with a gentle shake, much easier than dragging him from his bed on a schoolday. He blinks a few times, before staring out of the passenger window at the looming airport terminal.

“So cool,” he mutters. “Hey, this is gonna be me in the fall, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Regina agrees, taking his hand and squeezing it. Somehow they’ve become the hands of a man, long-fingered and slightly calloused from helping out around the farm. He grips his fingers around her own in acknowledgment, and Regina chokes back the memory of the first time he ever did that, seventeen years and a lifetime ago. “Should I really be doing this? She could be gone already.”

“Then you get on a plane to Boston and find her at that end, I guess?” Henry has the decisiveness of youth, and Regina envies him that. Nothing is too big, too scary, too life-changing. His life will be nothing but change for four years or more, and he’s eager for it. “I mean, you do know her surname, right?”

“Hey!” Regina panics for a split-second before the word “Swan” comes to her, and the details about National Geographic and everything Emma mentioned about the neighborhood she lives in. “You’re never old enough to start sassing your momma.”

“You want me to come in with you?” Henry asks. “I mean, we’d have to park properly, but I don’t mind.”

“You would do that?”

“Yeah. I mean, I kind of want to see this woman. You know Dad and Ro are gonna ask, never mind Kathryn. And uh, in case she didn’t hang around for this first flight, maybe it’s better you have some company.”

“If it’s too strange--”

“Then I’ll deal. Mom, c’mon. You’re stalling worse than I do about going to the dentist.”

“Nobody is that bad, mijo. Okay, let’s find a parking spot, and see if I’ve made a very big fool of myself. Or maybe not so much.”

“You won’t have, Mom. Nobody would be dumb enough to leave if there’s still a chance you might come get them.”

“Ah, there’s my little romantic. Please, try to make Grace the last heart you break before Thanksgiving, hmm? Give the girls of Boston a fair start?”

“I will if you will,” Henry snorts. “Is it weird that we’re…?”

“Yes. I think the jokes help. The hard stuff, that’s still to come. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go to sleep tonight not in our house, not able to come and check on you if I wake before the rooster.”

“Maybe nobody’s gonna sleep so good tonight,” Henry muses as she parks in the second row of short-term parking and kills the engine. “Look, Dad made a mess of these bags, you can fit the smaller one inside if you try.” He’s hiding in the practical, bottom lip just a little too prominent for everything to be completely okay.

“You really don’t have to come in.”

“I want to. Someone has to make sure she’s gonna treat you right. If this is really, really what you want to do? I mean, maybe you feel better just getting out of town, away from the farm? Maybe we all need to move to the city and…”

“Enrique.” Regina lays a gentle hand on his cheek, stroking lightly with her thumb. “It’s sweet of you to try. But sometimes done is done. If you need me, like I say, I’ll be right back. But I can’t live a lie with your father. That’s not fair to anybody.”

“Had to try one last Hail Mary,” Henry replies. “Wouldn’t forgive myself otherwise, right?”

“Right. I understand. Now, help me with this case, be my big strong boy, okay?”

“Okay.”

***

Emma wakes to an impossibly peppy blonde standing over her, two steaming paper cups in her hand.

“Coffee?” She offers, and Emma nods, trying to get to a sitting position with some kind of grace. She’s stiff, barely awake, and fails miserably, groaning like someone four times her age. 

“Thanks,” Emma says, taking a warming sip. “Have they sent you to, uh, clear out the vagrants or…?”

“Oh no, I’m not in uniform yet, but I’m stewarding the first United flight to Boston. You’re Emma Swan, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma answers, trying to smooth the hair that’s half fallen out of her sloppy bun. “They put me on standby for the first flight, but I don’t mind waiting for the second. It’s only a couple of hours to Boston, after all.”

“Oh, we should be able to squeeze you in on the first flight,” the stewardess replies. “But that goes from Terminal 3, they should have told you that yesterday. They all do, for domestic northeast.”

“Shoulda known that,” Emma answers. “If this was Boston, or even JFK, I could get to the right gates in my sleep.”

“I’ll bet. Listen, I came over here to find you because there was a note on the manifest about your standby. But also, Miss Swan, I’m such a fan of your work. We get the magazine on just about every flight, and without fail every shot that makes me look twice is one of yours.”

“That’s very kind of you, uh…”

“Ashley. Ashley Boyd. I drive the other girls crazy by making them read National Geographic when they’d rather be lost in US Weekly, so they’re gonna be thrilled I actually got to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure. I don’t really run into, uh, fans very often. You’ve turned around a pretty crappy morning for me, let me tell ya.” Emma tries to sound appropriately grateful, and usually with stewardesses who are at least a little more worldly, she doesn’t find flirting much of a risk. Right now though, her heart isn’t remotely in it.

“Why don’t I help you over to the right gates with your things? We can take a shortcut through the staff access, and then maybe that standby of yours might turn out to be a seat in first class?”

“You’re too kind,” Emma insists, but she’s smiling just a tiny bit as she sips her coffee. Apparently the universe has seen fit to soothe a broken heart with some special treatment, and for once she’s not going to resist it out of some stupid sense of pride.

“Right this way,” Ashley instructs, swinging Emma’s camera bag over her shoulder before Emma can stop her. “Oh wow, is this your camera? Do you mind me, you know…”

“Well I’m not gonna let you carry my heavy pack, so just don’t run into any walls and I think you’ll be just fine.” Emma falls in step, trying not to think about how much she suddenly has to pee. There’ll be plenty of time for that when she has a first class ticket in her hand.

***

With her duffel checked and her camera bag retrieved from Ashley who is now opening the check-in desk for these first flights, Emma is able to visit the deserted ladies room in the first class lounge and freshen herself up properly. She brushes her teeth and washes her face with a certain lethargy that even coffee and an upgrade can’t shake.

She’s still leaving her last chance at Regina, and what felt like the first chance at something real. The kind of thing that made her finally understand the attraction of strange notions like marriage and commitment and sharing the only private space you’ve ever had with someone, just because it means not being apart from them. It even tempered some of Emma’s permanent wanderlust. She expected to be weeping in gratitude at being allowed to flee the Midwest today, and instead she’d give anything, including her right arm, to be able to stay and kiss Regina even one more stupid time. 

A cliché, she decides. She’s nothing more than a goddamned cliché, and if this is what love does to a person, well. Thank God it’s never afflicted her before. 

Emma changes right there by the sinks, not bothering with the discretion of a stall. She figures locker room rules apply, and it’s only a minute or two before she’s dressed in her last pair of clean jeans and a white t-shirt that maybe shows too much of her black bra beneath it, but that’s what leather jackets were made to cover, in the chilly conditions of an airplane cabin.

Just as she’s packing the last of her things back into her carry-on, Ashley appears in the ladies room doorway. 

“You forgot your boarding pass,” she says, and Emma is pretty sure that a) she didn’t and b) that’s either a duplicate in Ashley’s hand or a very flimsy excuse. “Wouldn’t want you getting bumped back to your original flight after all this trouble, would we? But there’s still a little while before we need to be on board, Emma…”

“I, uh…”

“You know, whenever I asked around about you and your photographs, people always do that little raised eyebrow thing. We get a lot of your publishing types flying my routes and let’s just say it’s what they don’t say… that’s what makes you especially interesting.”

“Listen, I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done, and I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but-”

“I just hope the rumors are true,” Ashley says with a pout. “But don’t worry, I can keep a secret. They won’t go any further than me.”

“I should go,” Emma says, pushing past and keeping as wide a berth as possible. “I’m gonna grab the New York Times from the kiosk, you want anything?” Goddamn manners. She’s supposed to be keeping her distance. It’s bad enough that rejection is probably going to leave her flying in the hold now. Or at least not getting her bag of peanuts. 

“Emma, wait-”

Ashley follows her out of the bathroom, but Emma is suddenly deaf to anything she might be saying. There, just barely thirty feet away at the desks, stands Regina, some teenager and a whole lot of luggage.

“Regina!” She calls out, not giving the tiniest damn about propriety. Who the hell does she know in Chicago anyway?

Regina turns, her initial gasp of delight giving way to a frown. Emma freezes mid-step, looking down at herself and then back over her shoulder at Ashley. It doesn’t exactly look good. Emma panics, wondering how in the hell she can blow something like this when a miracle has just landed in her lap, when the teen comes charging towards her.

“You’re Emma?” He demands.

“Enrique?” She asks in return. He looks college age, so he’s probably the oldest of the two. The pictures Regina showed her are jumbled in Emma’s mind now, so it’s more of a swing and a hope at this stage.

“You can call me Henry. It sounds dumb when you say it.”

“You really did forget your boarding pass,” Ashley says, blushing furiously as she passes it to Emma and scurries off to join the other stewardesses behind the desks. 

“Did you seriously just pick up some chick when you’re supposed to be meeting my mom?” Henry is trying to whisper, but his anger is boiling over. Regina is still glaring from the check-in counter, her bags diminished and a pass in her hand. 

“First of all,” Emma huffs. “No! Damn, kid. You kiss your mother with that mouth? Talking about chicks like some pick-up artist?”

“The problem is apparently you’ve been kissing my mother with your mouth, and she’s given up everything to come here. So yeah, maybe I get to ask where that mouth has been-”

“Enrique.” Regina stops him, hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, sweetheart, but I can deal with this. Friend of yours?” She’s nodding at Ashley and Emma feels the same indignation rise.

“What? No! Come on, Regina. I didn’t know you were even coming, for a start, so if I had…”

“You assumed!” Regina looks livid, and maybe a little embarrassed. Emma takes a deep, shuddering breath and forces herself not to blow this with her hot-headed temper. “I had to call the airport and make sure you didn’t leave last night already.”

“No night flights to Boston,” Emma replies with a shrug. “This is the first one. Ashley there found me sleeping in the airport, got me a coffee and an upgrade. She likes my photography, that’s all. I swear.”

It’s a little white lie, but since Emma had no intentions, she figures that’s what actually counts.

“Mom, are you sure you want to do this?” Henry is pleading, and Emma knows it can’t be easy to give up his mom like this, college in the fall or not.

Regina considers Emma for a long moment, before reaching out and taking the hand that doesn’t have a boarding pass in it.

“Sí. Yes. Yes, I do.”

Emma wants nothing more than to kiss Regina like their very existence depends on it, hell, it feels as though it might, but the world is still not everything they’d like it to be. She settles, instead for a kiss on the cheek that lingers a fraction too long to be proper. Henry averts his eyes, and Emma nods towards him by way of apology.

“I’ll look after her, kid. I promise you. You’re coming in the fall, right? You can see for yourself. Stay with us, if you want, but I think you’ll have a lot more fun in dorms, right?”

“Definitely dorms,” Henry answers, a little too quickly. 

“You and your brother still have total access, okay? Wait, here’s my card,” Emma fishes a crumpled business card from her jacket pocket, and a pen with barely any ink to go with it. She scrawls her home address on the back, her number already on the front with the National Geographic office details. “She’s your mom, and anything you need, you’re both welcome. Or she can come to you, I’m not here to get in the way of any of that.”

Henry smiles at her, although it’s tentative.

“I guess I see why you like her, Mom.”

“How could I not?” Regina replies. “Your Momma has good taste, always has. I mean, look at the kids I chose to have.”

“You got on the first flight?” Emma asks, trying to see Regina’s boarding pass.

“Second,” Regina tells her. “Should we…?”

“I’ll sort something out,” Emma promises. “God, I’m so glad you’re here, I… Listen, I’ll be over there so you two can... whatever.”

She smiles at them both once more, shakes Henry’s hand, and goes to give the stewardesses even more trouble for one morning.

***

“I guess this is it, huh?” Henry can’t look at her, and Regina doesn’t make him right away.

“You can wait until they call the flight,” Regina suggests. “I’m uh… oh sweetheart, I can’t let you drive back alone. I can’t, I shouldn’t…”

He hugs her then, fierce in both his physical strength and intensity. Those weekends and holidays throwing around hay bales have clearly paid off. 

“Mom, it’s not going away for good. I mean, not really. I’ll be there real soon, and I’ll bring Ro to see you as soon as we can work something out. I still got my prize money from the goats, and-”

“This makes me a terrible mother,” Regina mutters, squeezing her eyes shut as she holds her son close to her, maybe as close as he’s been since the day he was born. 

“No.” Henry’s tone brooks no argument. “We’re all gonna feel weird for a while, maybe get pissed about it. Next time we argue I can’t promise I won’t blame you for leaving, or whatever. It’s gonna be tough watching Pop get used to this, but I’m not gonna be the reason you’re unhappy. Okay, maybe you’d have one more good year with Roland, two even. But after that we’re all gone… and so is your chance with Emma.”

“She is pretty amazing. I want you to get to know her, both of you. She can show Roland how to take great photos, and you’ll just die to hear her stories about all the places-”

“I bet,” Henry interrupts. “Just not yet, okay? I have to make sure Pop’s okay first. Then maybe we can all relax a bit.”

“Of course. When did you get so sensible?”

“I think you made me this way.”

“Enrique, I-” He pulls away from her carefully.

“I’m gonna go, Mom. I’m gonna drive out of the city while the roads are still quiet and find a clean rest stop where I can take another nap in the truck, okay? Then I’ll drive the rest of the way home, real safe.”

“Okay. Be so, so careful. If you feel tired at all-”

“Mom…”

“I’ll call you, from Boston. From the airport. No, maybe we’ll be there first. From Emma’s, anyway. You have the number, you call me? Well, whatever it takes, but I want to know the minute you’re home safe.”

“Yeah. Home. I’ll, uh, I’ll call, Mom.”

“I love you so much. You promise you know that?”

“I know, Mom. God. And I uh, love you, too. That’s why I’m making sure you do this, even if it is bizarre.”

“One more hug,” Regina insists, and he relents with a roll of his eyes. She lets go only when she senses Emma hovering nearby.

“I, uh, actually got us both on the first flight,” Emma explains. “And in first class, too.”

“See?” Henry puts his brave face back on. “Just as well we drove half the night to get here.”

“You okay getting back, kid?” Emma is fumbling in her pockets for cash. “If you want to stay at a hotel, get some rest, I can-”

“It’s fine,” Regina tells her. “Henry made his own plan. He’s gonna be just fine.”

“Yeah?” Emma asks, looking at them both.

“Yeah.” They all pretend they don’t hear Henry’s voice crack a little on the single syllable.

“Bye, Emma. Be good to her, or else.” Emma nods. “Bye, Momma. I’ll speak to you in a few hours, okay?”

“Okay. You’ll give your brother a hug from me? And your father, if he-”

“I got it.” Henry holds up the car keys awkwardly. “Have a safe flight.”

He turns then, trying not to sprint back towards the glass doors and the safety of the parking lot. Regina doesn’t want to think about how long he’ll sit in the truck and cry before he feels like driving back. She can only hope it isn’t long, and try to tamp down the seventeen-year reflex of chasing right after him.

“So,” Emma breaks the silence after a minute or so. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Regina responds, forcing herself to look away from the terminal doors and really drink in the sight of Emma at long last. “First class, huh? You think spoiling me is the way to start this?”

“I’m just so fucking relieved we’re starting it,” Emma answers, all in a rush. “I mean, continuing it, really. I understand if you want to start fresh today, I do. But I’m not giving up a single day of being crazy about you.”

“I don’t want to give that up either. I won’t.” Regina smiles. “But listen, I have so much to tell you. So much I need to say. And you need to tell me why, for the love of God, you slept in a cold, drafty airport when there was a perfectly decent hotel room. With a working telephone!”

“I want to kiss you so badly right now. I mean, it’s Chicago, there’s not so many people around…” Emma kisses her briefly on the lips. Regina sighs in contentment because it’s enough, a craving satisfied, and not nearly close to enough all at the same time.

“You got a little braver,” Regina tells her.

“I have to be. Gotta keep up with you and all this bravery of yours.”

“It hasn’t been easy. I think you know that? I can’t promise I won’t completely fall apart at some point. I don’t want you to feel responsible, like you have to make me feel better when I do.”

“Well, there is,” Emma suggests in a whisper, not pulling all the way back out of Regina’s personal space. “Always a little something called the mile high club.”

“The what?”

_This is a boarding call for Flight UA 003 to Boston at Gate 7. Would first class passengers please make their way to the gate for priority boarding._

“Huh,” Emma says, reaching for Regina’s hand. “You ready for that next big adventure?”

“Yes,” Regina replies, squeezing Emma’s fingers with her own. “Yes, I really am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: the use of stewardesses, it's a period thing. That's what people were calling them in the time I've mentally set this (a little later than the 1965 of the movie and book, more like the mid-80s in terms of the geography and lack of cellphones, etc).
> 
> There'll be a little epilogue in the next day or two, but wow this has been a trip to write. I just hope you've enjoyed reading it.


	20. Chapter 20

The water rolls gently down her legs as she raises her knees, sleepy in the steamy candlelight of the room. Behind her, Emma grunts softly, trying to pretend she’s been awake this whole time. At least her grip, cupping Regina’s breasts, has never wavered. 

“You feel nice,” Regina tells her. She stares up at the skylight in the apartment’s bathroom, twenty feet or more above them. The biggest concern about city-dwelling, once Regina got over the excitement of the flight and the sounds and the journey to Emma’s place that resulted in them being less than appropriate - twice - on the climb up three floors of stairs, was that Regina might feel claustrophobic after so many years in wide open spaces. 

Not so. The apartment stands in an old mercantile building near an almost abandoned wharf. When the shipping trade had needed every nook and cranny of Boston harbor, Emma told her, this area had been popular for shipments of granite. Only when business started to die down and a ‘convenient’ fire had gutted this warehouse to give the owner a hefty insurance check, did property developers see the potential for a residential space.

It suits Emma, Regina can tell. The space is enough for somehow who gets antsy about being trapped in one place too long, and their views out over the water make the world feel infinite almost every night. Even when the fog rolls in, they’ve been far too busy christening every surface and fabric in the loft to care too much. 

“You feel pretty nice yourself,” Emma murmurs, kissing the top of Regina’s head where she’s leaning back, before rolling her hips under the water with unsubtle intent. “You know, now we’ve relaxed and cleaned up a little…”

“You’re insatiable,” Regina chuckles, and maybe she still blushes in the candlelight. To be so wanted, so cherished after years of something like indifference is still dizzying. It helps that Emma’s been in Buenos Aires for the best part of the week, and if it hadn’t been so long she’d probably be in the room she’s set up as a home studio developing photographs right now. Instead, Regina had met her at the door and a long, sweating, body-trembling hour later they’d decided to treat themselves to a soak in the freestanding tub that Emma apparently liberated from a foreclosure in her old neighborhood. 

“Can you blame me?” Emma kisses each of Regina’s shoulders in turn. Regina grips the side of the tub, raising herself as slowly as she can. Emma kisses down her spine and each ass cheek with cheeky enthusiasm once Regina is standing before her. “You know, I can work in wet conditions.”

“I’m turning into a prune,” Regina objects. “Come on, lazy Emma. Get out of that tub and I’ll make it worth your while.” Stepping out with care, Regina wraps herself in a white towel that seems to glow against her skin. She’s trying to be frugal with her money, but there are some little luxuries when Emma shows her new department stores and boutiques, that are very hard to resist. 

“You’re so cruel to me,” Emma sighs. She pulls the stopper from the tub with her toes and blinks out the nearest candle with wet fingertips. “You know I can’t resist when I see you walking away like that.”

Regina puts an extra sway in the movement of her hips. Emma groans.

“Unless you want to eat first?” Regina reconsiders in the doorway. “I made some snacks. I didn’t know if you’d eat on the plane, I didn’t ask when you-”

During her babble of concern, Emma has crossed the bathroom with a cursory attempt at rubbing a towel over her wet skin. She catches up to Regina and interrupts her with a tender kiss, making her lips tingle all over again.

“There’s only one thing I’m interested in eating right now,” Emma purrs, just a little breathless with anticipation. Regina smacks her on the bare ass for being crude, but smiles anyway. “You want to take this to bed?”

“It might be our last chance for a couple of days,” Regina points out, and she’s been trying not to bring up the subject, not when it makes them both worry so much.

“Quite right. Teenage boys aren’t great about privacy,” Emma groans. “Trust me, I shared enough foster homes with them. We’d better make the most of tonight then.”

“Good,” Regina agrees. “Did I tell you how much I missed you?”

“You didn’t,” Emma disagrees. “You were too busy at the campaign office to even think about me. Admit it.”

“Not even the Mayoral race can distract me from you, darling,” Regina assures her. “How distracting can it be to stuff envelopes and make placards, anyway?”

“You’re practically running the office already,” Emma points out, guiding Regina by the hand into their bedroom. The sheets are fresh and undisturbed, as white as the towels they’re already shucking towards the floor. Regina revels in being able to favor light colors again, in a home free from muddy boots and grass-stained jeans at every turn. Emma isn’t even a messy person to tidy up after, she has so few possessions outside of her camera equipment that Regina thought she might have been robbed. “I’d vote for you, if you ran for Mayor.”

“You’re biased. And maybe I’m just naturally bossy,” Regina says, letting Emma push her down on the comforter and kneel over her for a much more involved kiss, their tongues flicking against each other, the familiarity of their kisses like a steady drip of gasoline on a newly-revived flame. It doesn’t take long before hands are wandering, the touches light but still just a little desperate. 

Regina thinks sometimes Emma is trying to memorize her, to create some mental negative that she can develop whenever they have to be apart. It makes the steady beat of love that’s been squeezing her heart for months now speed up just a little. 

As Emma begins to move her mouth lower, Regina grabs her shoulder. 

“No turns this time. Together. Please.”

“I knew you loved that last time,” Emma says with a lazy grin. Regina had intended to start out asking for this in their earlier session, but she’d been so glad to see Emma that she’d simply pinned her up against the front door and done everything she’d missed in the previous week, something Emma had already reciprocated with delicately fingered orgasms on the sofa.

It’s a moment of awkwardness to rearrange themselves, despite the weeks upon weeks of practice. Some positions will always take a little work, at least as long as they’re so eager to get back to the business of pleasuring each other, and Regina feels every moment of separation or delay like a blow. 

On top, Emma places her knees either side of Regina’s head, deliberately staying too high for Regina to be able to simply swipe her tongue and be rewarded. Taking her time, Emma kisses each of Regina’s breasts in turn, a pilgrimage she rarely skips, and leans gradually as she plants open-mouthed kisses down over Regina’s abdomen. Only when her nose grazes wet curls does Emma lower her own wetness closer to Regina’s waiting mouth. Regina takes a firm grip on Emma’s thighs to stop her moving away again, and draws a long line with her tongue starting with a fluttering kiss on Emma’s clit. 

Her own reward is spectacular. With experimentation Emma has discovered that the one way to drive Regina halfway out of her mind is fast, constant, fluttering pressure. Whether that’s flicking her tongue in and out of Regina, or sucking playfully on her wet lips, she moves constantly and builds pressure quickly by lavishing it everywhere but where Regina is instantly craving it most.

In retaliation, Regina uses the firm, strong strokes directly over Emma’s clit, both as a hint and an effective way to get her worked up immediately. Despite the different approaches, it does turn them on in roughly equal measure, their bath-dampened bodies moving seamlessly together. Regina moves her grip to massage Emma’s ass, and briefly contemplates some other moves they’ve been trying in recent weeks, but it’s difficult to plan a pleasurable assault when her own body is already thrumming with impending climax.

They give and take, tongues lashing or flickering in turn, and just as Regina doubts she can hold off much longer, very soon after Emma has finally turned attention to her throbbing clit, Emma gives in to the sustained pressure and shakes against Regina’s mouth.

It’s as close to together as Regina cares for it to be, and she gives in then, the world blurring at the edges as she moans in happiness at the warm glow that rushes over her. Almost every time her body surprises her with the depth and variety of its reactions. Her initial concerns that Emma would tire of her, that Regina wouldn’t be able to keep pace or interest her enough, have proven entirely unfounded.

Later, maybe, Regina will ponder on what this means for her as a woman, as a sexual being. Right now, Emma is rolling off and scrambling a little in the sheets to right herself, resting her head on Regina’s breast and hugging her close. 

“Sleepy,” Emma murmurs. Regina grunts softly in agreement, and they drift off together, bare skin cooling in the still air of the apartment. 

***

“You’re awake.” Emma doesn’t intend it as an accusation, but Regina starts as if it had been.

“I know when you’re not in bed with me,” Regina explains. “But I’m having trouble staying asleep this week.”

“Henry was here like, a week ago,” Emma reminds her. “Is it really going to be so much worse with Roland? He seems great when you’re on the phone.”

“He’s scared of flying,” Regina blurts. “He didn’t want to tell me in case I was disappointed. Between making him do that and the latest little letter from Robin…”

“It came when I was away?” 

“Yeah. Not the lawyer this time. His own three pages of all the ways in which I’ve hurt and betrayed him. He never writes, I don’t think I’ve seen him write on anything but a check for years. But there are my sins, printed right there in the capital letters. It must have taken him forever.”

“Didn’t your friend say he’s been out dancing with some woman?” Emma hates these conversations, the guilt winding through the room like a boa constrictor, hugging a little tighter with every reminder Regina gets of home. Of course, Emma also accepts that it’s totally necessary, and the price they’re both paying for the circumstances in which they met. It doesn’t make it any less irritating.

“Kathryn said that, but she’s only getting it second hand. I would think Marian Locksley could do better than a 45 year-old in the middle of a divorce.”

“Speaking of the d-word…” Emma hesitates. “Did that attorney call again?”

“She did. She says she can push for more if I claim Robin was cruel to me. Can you believe that?”

“You’re the client,” Emma assures, crawling back under the sheets in her oversized softball jersey. “She can’t do that if you don’t want it. But don’t screw yourself out of the part you’re owed, Regina. You gave a hell of a lot to that marriage, and that farm.”

“I know. You’re being very patient. Last time we discussed this I thought you were going to walk all the way back to Storybrooke just to punch him out?”

“Punch him out?” Emma wraps an arm around Regina’s shoulders and nuzzles her neck. “I like the way you say that. But no. My temper might get out sometimes, but so long as you get your due your husband gets no trouble from this little lady.”

“Oh, you’re a lady now?” Regina teases. “I seem to recall some very unladylike curses when I had my fingers inside you.”

“Now who’s insatiable?” 

“Mmm, I think you might actually have worn me out. We should sleep, right? Airport in a few hours.”

“I bet Roland’s in love with planes by the time he lands, don’t worry.” Emma gives Regina a brief, comforting kiss on the lips. It stops the lower lip from trembling, and they pause like that for a moment, foreheads together, before rearranging themselves and the pillows in the hope of getting more sleep.

“Even with all this,” Regina whispers, settled into the comfort of Emma spooning her. “I’m very happy, you know?”

“I know,” Emma whispers back. “Me too.”

***

The rush to the airport isn’t exactly dignified.

Emma burnt her tongue on the coffee she insisted she needed before driving, and Regina made them even later with her fourth outfit change of the morning.

“I just want to look like he remembers,” Regina insists, and Emma wants to tell her that she hasn’t changed so much as she’s become more of herself, but she nods in agreement anyway. This isn’t her fight. This is just her turn to stand in the corner and hand out towels where required. Or whatever.

They make it with maybe three minutes to spare, jogging through the terminal and arriving at his arrival gate faintly out of breath.

Emma has to turn away for a moment when Regina finally picks Roland out of the crowd, scattering people as though they were skittles in her rush to hold her baby boy again. He tries to affect the bored teenager look, but there’s no mistaking the way his eyes light up on seeing her, or how tightly he returns her hug.

By the time he steers his mother back towards Emma, she’s kissing his cheeks and his forehead, tears streaming down her face. It isn’t the reserve that Emma’s gotten used to seeing when she drops in on Regina at work, or the perfect charm she’s displayed every time they go out with Emma’s handful of friends. Regina probably has more friends in Boston now than Emma does, come to think of it; this city is letting her blossom in ways neither of them truly expected.

“Momma, enough with the español already,” Roland groans. “You know I don’t get much practice.”

“Okay, okay,” Regina relents, finally letting him go before grabbing him once more with an arm around his waist. “Mijo, this is Emma. I’m so glad you two can finally meet.”

“Ma’am.” Roland extends a hand, and it’s so formal that one-by-one they all crack up laughing.

“Kid, I don’t know you so well, but I will warn you off the ma’am crap,” Emma tells him. “I got 10 years, easy, before I’m a ‘ma’am’, okay?”

“Sorry,” Roland blushes, but there’s a grin that says maybe cheeky Enrique has put him up to it. Pretending he thinks Emma is about 60 is one of their new rituals whenever they meet for a meal, or he pops round for food and offloading his laundry, like any sensible student. 

“Well, it broke the ice,” Emma says. “I’ve told your brother plenty of times, but I guess you want to know this up front. This is weird. For everybody. Your mom and I, we’ve made a little home here. So that makes it your home, too.”

“Henry says it’s pretty cool.”

“It is,” Regina agrees. “I still expect good manners. Those socks of yours, I don’t want to find them all over the floor, comprendes?” 

“Yes, momma…” Roland groans. “I got a note from Daniel here, about Rocinante. And I took some pictures, Dad got me this little camera, so I thought I’d let you see some stuff in case you worry.”

“Of course I worry,” Regina tells him. “You got taller again, didn’t you? Are you eating properly? If you grow without eating right, your bones will-”

“Momma!” 

“Sorry, but-”

“We eat at Granny’s some nights. I go to the library after school and Dad comes to get me. I told you that. And I learned to cook some stuff with you last summer. Plus Kathryn comes round with things and uh then when M… so yeah. We’re fine.”

“Marian?” Regina seizes on the misstep. “Well. Well, that’s good, sweetheart. I want your father to be happy. But most importantly, I want you both to eat well.”

“We eat pretty good.”

“Shall we go get your bag?” Emma notices the crowd has thinned out, and she feels like quite the outsider as mother and son catch up. In the car, she’ll have the excuse of watching the road and letting them chatter on. “Sooner we get your stuff, the sooner we can hook you up with your mom’s cooking. She’s got the kitchen overflowing.”

“Is Henry coming to the house?”

“The apartment,” Regina corrects gently. “Yes. Your big brother doesn’t like to be collected these days. He has a car of his own, didn’t he tell you?”

“Yeah, he has your truck.”

“Right, this way.” Emma can lead them to baggage claim with her eyes closed, so she strikes out in front, just hoping they’ll follow.

***

After the flurry of joking punches and headlocks, a thousand-mile-per-hour conversation about school and comics and something about the creek that even Regina can’t follow, her boys are poised at opposite ends of Emma’s long black sofa. 

“Where do we sleep?” Roland asks after a minute of awkward silence. “Dad gave me money for a hotel or a motel or-”

Henry shoots him a glare that shuts him up. Regina feels her heart sink. She doesn’t mention how she has some cash sitting in her purse for the exact same purpose, for fear that introducing her second son to Emma would finally make everything blow up in their faces.

“Right here, kid.” Emma is hovering in the doorway of the spare bedroom, one that used to be home to piles of junk, most of it tipped out of the darkroom next door to it, but Regina had put paid to that in a hurry. “The bed is pretty old, but the mattress is new. The door in the corner is a closet, you can put your stuff anywhere you want, though.”

“Thanks,” Roland says, but he makes no move to go see what Emma is gesturing towards. Regina looks between them from her perch on the armchair, uneasy.

“I guess it’s just dinner today and stuff,” Henry chimes in. “But what do you wanna go see tomorrow, squirt? I bet you didn’t look at that guidebook I sent you once, did ya?”

“Whatever. I guess.” Roland looks directly at Regina, and she recognizes the quiet panic in his eyes; he’s been making the same expression since the darker days of potty training. Her boy is uncomfortable, bordering on distress. She gets up to comfort him, but he’s not quite done. “Are we supposed to just act like this is normal?” He blurts it out, but makes no move to take it back.

“Ro, c’mon,” Henry warns.

“It’s okay,” Emma interjects. “Let him say what he’s gotta say.”

“I don’t need your permission!” Roland snaps. “You’re not my mom, you’re not my dad. In fact you stole my mom and now you three get to have all your fun adventures in the big city, and I’m stuck at home.”

“Roland, mijo, you can come here-”

“I don’t even know if I want to come here!” He whines. “I don’t know anything about it. I just know I’m tired of being left out.”

“Sweetheart, we can-”

“Is that my room?” Roland asks of Emma. She nods, and steps aside. He grabs his bag and marches right in, slamming the door behind him. Regina feels the tears begin to flow all over again. She’s getting so tired of crying. 

“He just needs more time,” Henry insists, coming to comfort her with an awkward hug. “I found it weird the first couple of times. But Emma and I get on fine now, don’t we?”

“Yeah, we do.” Emma smiles at him, and Regina feels Henry smiling back. “Roland didn’t get the head start that we all did. Let’s just let him do his thing. I’m not taking it too personally.”

“You’re sure?” Regina lets go of Henry and crosses over to Emma. “Whatever the situation, I won’t have him hurt you, Emma. I love you too much to let you bear the brunt of all this tension.”

“I’m pretty tough,” Emma replies. “I can take it for a while, let him work out all the confusion. I know a little bit of what it’s like, after all.”

“I’ll grab him some of the cookies from the kitchen,” Henry suggests. “We’ll have soda and cookies, maybe talk a bit. Maybe we’ll just read comics,” he adds, probably for the benefit of his brother who will be listening at the door as usual. “Either way, he’ll come out of there when he’s ready.”

“Okay,” Regina agrees. Her heart is full of love for them all, and with pride that Henry is becoming the peacemaker, a man of thought and compassion. College agrees with him, and Boston does too. “I’d better get that turkey in, if we’re going to eat before midnight.”

***

Emma hears the door click when no one else registers it, but two years in this apartment have tuned her to its every creak and groan. It’s maybe as long as she’s lived anywhere, since she was three years old, and only now does it feel like a home.

Maybe that’s what Roland can’t resist as he cuts through the living area in his socks, unheard over the chatter from the kitchen, Henry taking instructions as Regina pulls things from the oven and from pots, languid blues music as their soundtrack.

Emma intercepts Roland at the sofa, and he stares her down in defiance. It’s hard not to like that about him.

“Anything you want to say,” she begins. “Get it out now so you don’t hurt your mom. If you’ve got any questions, I guess I’ll take those too.”

Roland considers the offer. “You’re protecting her.”

“Just like you would. Or your brother.”

“But you’re not… I mean… this isn’t going to go back to how it was, is it?” Roland looks like he’s trying not to cry. And a lot like he already lost that battle in the room once Henry left him to his solitude. 

“Nope.” Emma folds her arms across her chest. “I mean, not unless your mom wanted to come back to be with you. I’d come with her, if she let me. I just don’t think that’s gonna happen, kid.”

“Not ever?”

Emma shakes her head.

“And you’d really give up this cool apartment, and a city where you can do just about anything? Give it all up for my mom?”

“We might need to live somewhere not quite Storybrooke, because I need to travel a bunch,” Emma concedes. “But yeah, if she wanted that, I’d give it to her.”

“I guess I thought you’d keep her here no matter what,” Roland tells her. “Like I kinda wanted to think she wanted to come back right away, but you wouldn’t let her. That wasn’t how it was, was it?”

“She has missed you every single day, I’ll tell you that.” Emma can say it with confidence, despite the days she’s been away for work. If anything, those days were probably even tougher on Regina. “A few times I thought she might leave, she missed you so much. I won’t see her miserable.”

“But she’s happy the rest of the time,” Roland realizes. “I saw her, at the airport. Before she saw me, when I was coming up that bridge thing? She was looking at you, and she looked so excited.”

“That was mostly about seeing you.”

“It was different. More, I think? Henry says Mom was happy about us back home, but not about anything else. Maybe here she can be happy about both, right? Is that how it is?”

“Yes,” Regina says, coming in from the kitchen. Emma hadn’t heard her approach. “I knew you’d work it out, my darling boy. You worked it out quicker than I did.”

“Momma, I don’t know what to do. I miss you.”

“Then come here as often as we can make it happen. Change school if you want to, but you only have the rest of this year and next to make it through. I think your Pop would appreciate having you around, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I don’t want to leave him alone.” Roland is firm about that much. “I like your apartment, Emma. Thanks for letting me stay.”

Emma grins at him. “It’s your mom’s apartment now, too. Well, I gotta do some paperwork, but that’s how I want it, if she does.”

“What?” Regina turns to her, stunned.

“I can’t buy you a ring, well, not with any kind of legal rights behind it. I travel to some dangerous places, and planes fall out of the sky.” Emma shrugs, aware that everyone is staring at her. “Buying a place, a place to call mine, is the second most important thing I’ve ever done. I never had anything to really own before. The most important thing I ever did is ask you to come here and live with me,” Emma feels her throat tighten at speaking so honestly in front of people, but she forces herself to continue. “So I wanted to add your name to the deeds. Make the place half yours. You made it a home, Regina. And it’s the best commitment I know how to make.”

“Emma…”

“Don’t say anything just now,” Emma panics as Henry joins their discussion, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and clearly having overheard everything she just said. “I don’t want to put anyone off their yams.”

“Roland,” Regina says. “Go and help Henry bring the dishes in. Start with the vegetables, you know my drill.”

“Yes, Momma.” Roland scurries over to join his brother, their heads bending in conversation as they enter the kitchen.

“Emma,” Regina breathes. “What did you… was that just for the boys’ sake, or…?”

“Yeah, I gave you half my apartment to make your kids like me,” Emma cracks. “You don’t think a car would have been easier? Of course I meant it. I just didn’t mean to say it right then. If it makes the boys know I’m serious, well. Maybe that’s okay, too.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Regina admits. “It seems so big, such a gesture that my brain doesn’t know what to do about it.”

“I vote you say yes,” Emma answers, pulling Regina close. Not before checking warily over her shoulder. “Can I kiss you while you think about it?”

“Of course,” Regina says. “And don’t worry about the boys. They have to get used to it sometime. This is not going to be a house where people forget to show affection.”

“You said that like a co-homeowner,” Emma murmurs before kissing her sweetly. Regina threads her fingers through Emma’s hair, loose and curled today, exactly how Regina likes it best. “Are you saying yes?” She asks when they part.

“Yes,” Regina tells her. “Let’s leave it until New Year though, okay? I have enough legal papers to decorate the entire loft with as it is.”

“Deal,” Emma says, and although she tenses at the sounds of the boys bringing yams and green beans and potatoes to the table behind them, she makes the effort not to let Regina go. It’s not much effort at all, not with how much she likes having Regina in her arms.

“Are they always this embarrassing?” Roland asks Henry loudly. Henry cracks up laughing in response. 

“This is them behaving,” Henry tells him a moment later, through his laughter. “You have no idea, squirt.”

“I guess I’ll get used to it,” Roland decides. “Anything has to be better than you and Grace sucking face, bro.”

Regina kisses Emma at that pronouncement, a brief meeting of lips that promises more, even if the boys are just downstairs tonight. Emma isn’t sure she’ll come through on that with the way the table is already groaning with food. She intends to enjoy just as much as she can cram into her face. 

“Turkey’s gonna get cold,” Henry tells them, and Regina finally lets Emma go, guiding her to the table with a hand at the small of her back.

“Emma, you’ll have to excuse what you’re about to witness,” Regina warns her. “Henry isn’t so bad on his own, you’ve seen that. But my boys get a little competitive on the holiday feasts. It’s not a pretty sight.”

“Oh, I reckon I can take ‘em,” Emma tells them. “These amateurs probably can’t even get all the meat from a turkey leg.”

“Hey!” Roland protests. “You’re going down for that, Emma. Nobody eats like the Mills boys. Nobody.”

“Mills versus Swan it is,” Emma announces, taking her seat on one side of the circular table they picked out two weeks after Regina moved in; she wanted a dinner table with no obvious ‘head’ and this had fit the bill. “Regina, you’ll referee?”

“You know I’ll always favor my boys,” Regina retorts. “Don’t I, mijos?”

Henry and Roland both nod, watching in earnest as Regina goes to retrieve the turkey. 

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she announces, setting the perfectly bronzed bird in the center of the table. “I’m very thankful for all of you.”

“Me too,” each of them answers, voice overlapping. 

It isn’t perfect, Emma knows. But judging by the smile that’s beaming from Regina’s face, it might just be good enough for now.


End file.
